Raphael Stevens

About 37% of Americans have been charged a late fee on some kind of bill in the last 12 months, according to a new report by NerdWallet.
“Late fees are just one consequence of making late payments,” said Sara Rathner, a travel and credit cards expert at NerdWallet.

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Many consumers are finding it hard to keep up with their bills.
To that point, 37% of Americans have been charged a late fee on some kind of bill in the last 12 months, according to a new report by NerdWallet.

Credit card late fees were the most common, with 21% of survey respondents incurring at least one. Others had been charged late fees on utility bills, 10%, and rent, 8%. NerdWallet polled 2,061 U.S. adults in early April.
“Late fees are just one consequence of making late payments,” said Sara Rathner, a travel and credit cards expert at NerdWallet.
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While you can be assessed with a late fee as soon as you miss the payment deadline on a credit card or loan, it typically doesn’t show up as a black mark on your credit report until you are 30 days late, said Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree.
And if you’re late by 30 days or more, that’s when it starts to get more serious, experts say. Falling behind on payments can also come with more severe consequences, like having utility service shut off. Some consequences can be immediate, too, like car repossession.

“If you know that you’re going through a financial rough time, it’s definitely better to tackle it head on and not wait,” Schulz said.
Here’s how to limit the impact of late fees, and work with creditors if certain life events, like a layoff or financial hardship, are impacting your ability to pay.

‘Speak directly to you creditors’

If you are beginning to fall behind on usual monthly payments, or anticipate you might, it’s best to “speak directly to your creditors before you run into trouble,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.
“That’s when you have the most options. The further behind you get, the fewer options exist,” he said.

Communicating your issue as early as possible can help. If your bill is due on the last day of the month, don’t wait to contact your servicer the day before, Schulz said.
If you contact them well in advance, you have more flexibility to explain your situation and negotiate a resolution, he said.
“Whenever you can go into one of these situations and offer up a solution … that can go a long way to making the conversation go a lot more smoothly,” Schulz said.

1. Ask to waive a late fee

Cardholders can ask their card company to waive a late fee the first time they miss a payment, Schulz wrote in his book, “Ask Questions, Save Money, Make More: How to Take Control of Your Financial Life.”
But keep in mind, “the more often that happens, the less likely,” the lender will offer a waiver, McBride said.
If you paid late once and there’s a high chance you will pay late again in the near future because of a financial issue, let the lender know, said Schulz.
“It’s one thing to go to the lender every other month and say, ‘Hey, I was late with this, can you waive that?’ It’s something else entirely to say, ‘Hey, I was late because I have this medical emergency or I lost my job,'” he said.

2. Enroll in hardship programs

If you realize that your payments are becoming harder to meet because of an unexpected life event such as a layoff, most lenders offer hardship programs. Those can help consumers by temporarily reducing interest rates and waiving fees, wrote Schulz in his book.
While the particular details can vary, “the key is to partake” of those opportunities, as they are “designed to help you get back on your feet,” McBride explained.
“If you run from the problem and just fall further and further behind, it just further limits your options,” he said.

3. Ask about cleaning up your credit report

Even one late payment can make a significant dent in your credit score; it could drop your score by up to 100 points, depending on other elements of your credit history.
If you made a one-time mistake, you can reach out to your lender and ask to have that late payment scrubbed from your credit report, experts say. While it’s possible under certain circumstances, lenders are generally not a fan of the tactic because it renders the data unreliable for future credit transactions. 
“Your credit report is just a collection of a bunch of data points representing how good you are paying debts back,” Schulz said. If lenders begin to “cherry pick” what goes on in the report, the data becomes unreliable, and it doesn’t help lenders make decisions. 

“The primary customers for credit reports are not consumers; it’s businesses,” said Schulz, as the reports are devised to help businesses make lending decisions.
Even though it is rare to occur, if you’re in an unusual situation and otherwise have a “spotless history,” you can go to the lender and explain what happened. For example: if you paid late because of a natural disaster, it doesn’t hurt to ask. 
“Weird life circumstances happen to everybody,” he said. More

Swedish climate fintech startup Doconomy told CNBC it’s raised 34 million euros ($36.9 million) in a Series B round co-led by the venture arms of UBS and CommerzBank.
Founded in Sweden in 2018, Doconomy works with more than 100 financial institutions around the world to help their clients measure the CO2 footprint of their transactions.
Doconomy plans to use the fresh cash to drive expansion into North America and roll out new products, CEO and co-founder Mathias Wikstrom told CNBC exclusively.

From left to right: Johan Pihl, Doconomy’s chief creative officer and co-founder, and Mathias Wikstrom, chief executive officer and co-founder.

Swedish climate-focused financial technology startup Doconomy told CNBC on Thursday that it’s raised 34 million euros ($36.9 million) from leading European banks, including UBS and Commerzbank.
Doconomy, which offers tools to help bank customers measure the carbon footprint of their everyday spending, raised the cash in a Series B financing round co-led by UBS Next and CommerzVentures, the venture arms of UBS and Commerzbank, respectively.

Credit ratings agency S&P Global came on board as a new investor, while existing shareholders Motive Ventures, PostFinance and Tenity also participated.
Founded in Sweden in 2018, Doconomy works with the likes of Boston Consulting Group, Mastercard, S&P Global, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to calculate the climate cost associated with financial transactions.
Among the firm’s tools is the AIand Index, a cloud-based service for banks that helps their customers convert every transaction into its corresponding CO2 footprint. The index is used by more than 100 financial institutions in more than 40 countries.

Doconomy plans to use the fresh cash to drive expansion into North America and roll out new products, CEO and co-founder Mathias Wikstrom told CNBC in an interview.
“Going forward, we want to enable every bank in every corner of the world to engage their clients in the ESG [environmental, social, and governance] work of the bank,” Wikstrom said. “We see a connection between the E and S, the environmental and the social. We can’t isolate those two different streams.”

Wikstrom said he was “very happy” to see partnerships emerging with the likes of UBS and Commerzbank, describing it as an “alliance of the winning both money and intellect into getting this issue under control.

Politicization of climate

News of Doconomy’s latest funding follows the firm’s February 2023 deal to acquire Dreams Technology, a platform that uses behavioral science to boosts customers’ digital engagement and financial wellbeing.
Wikstrom said that Doconomy’s valuation in its Series B round is unchanged from the price at which it raised funds in its Series A, which saw the firm raise cash from the likes of Citi Ventures, Mastercard, and Ikea parent company Ingka.
Doconomy’s growth story hasn’t come without its challenges. More recently, the firm faced attacks from right-wing online commentator Jordan Peterson and his followers.

It’s not really hurricane season anymore, it’s fear season.

Mathias Wikstrom
CEO, Doconomy

Last week, Peterson targeted the company in a post on social media platform X, labelling it the “soft positive planet-saving voice of the worst imaginable corporate/fascist/green tyranny.”
The Canadian psychologist, who gained internet fame critiquing so-called political correctness, is a noted skeptic who described climate change as “the idiot socialist get-out-of-jail-free card.” He once framed rising greenhouse gas emissions as a positive for making the planet “green in the driest areas.”
Climate scientists say this is misleading, as it doesn’t take into account the negative effects intensified droughts, wildfires and heatwaves caused by global warming have on plants and ecosystems.
Wikstrom told CNBC that the situation concerning Peterson’s attacks on his firm “illustrates that we need to educate a lot of people.”
“Fear will lead to frustration and frustration will potentially lead to protests, and protests will lead to violence and violence will lead to damage done,” he told CNBC.
Wikstrom said that he hopes that the more the likes of Peterson and other climate skeptics keep “banging the drum,” the likelier that their sentiments will eventually sound “hollow.”
“Looking at what’s happening in Hawaii, in Canada, in France, in Spain, in Greece — we have the floods, we have the fires, we have so many concerns now,” he said. “It’s not really hurricane season anymore, it’s fear season.”
Climate fintech is a niche area of financial technology that has attracted heightened interest from investors, as world governments push corporates to hit ESG targets and reduce carbon emissions associated with their operations.
Michael Baldinger, chief sustainability officer of UBS, said the bank’s venture investment into Doconomy “underscores our focus on fostering innovation to provide the data and actionable insights our clients need to make informed choices about their investments and effect the change they want to see.”  More

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