CRL in the News

“These things have the same functional problems as payday loans, except they’re worse,” said Mike Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group. “There’s very manipulative pricing.”

"It's much broader than ATVs and lawn equipment," said Kelly Tornow, from the Center for Responsible Lending.

“I can pull people off the street that may be ordained but that doesn’t mean they represent us. . . . It’s smoke and mirrors,” said the Rev. Sekinah Hamlin of the Center for Responsible Lending. “Despite what they say, we have faith traditions, and payday loans don’t align with those traditions.”

State law enforcement officials investigated and enforced the law against for-profit colleges well before the Trump administration took office, but in the absence of aggressive federal regulations, states are “continuing to step up to protect their residents,” said Lisa Stifler, the state policy deputy director at the Center for Responsible Lending.

The average loan for the state of Indiana is $317, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, which researches the impact of predatory lending practices. A typical borrower will pay more than $400 in additional finance charges for a loan of that size.

Four consumer advocacy groups have filed a motion seeking leave to file an amicus memorandum opposing the joint motion filed by the CFPB and two trade groups that seeks a stay of the compliance date for the CFPB’s final payday/auto title/high-rate installment loan rule (Payday Rule). The joint motion, which was filed in the trade groups’ April 2018 lawsuit challenging the Payday Rule, also seeks a stay of the litigation for the duration of the CFPB’s rulemaking to reconsider the Payday Rule.

The Center for Responsible Lending and other groups contend in their briefs that courts should step in “where the market for consumer loans fails to produce socially tolerable terms” — and that CashCall’s loans, with high rates and payments stretched out for years, are simply not acceptable.

“It’s the same predatory lending schemes in a different package,” said Diane Standaert, director of state policy at the Center for Responsible Lending. “What has remained unchanged for all these years is that the debt trap remains the core of the business model.”

"It's the same predatory lending schemes in a different packages," said Diane Standaert, director of state policy at the Center for Responsible Lending. "What has remained unchanged for all these years is that the debt trap remains the core of the business model."

About 900 South Carolina payday and auto-title lenders made more than a million such loans in 2015, the latest year tallied by the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending. The 128,000 borrowers paid an average annual percentage rate of 390% on a $391 loan borrowed for two weeks. The number of loans made to North Carolinians is not tracked, but clearly tens of thousands made the trek across the state line, helping make South Carolina the 12th-biggest payday-lending state. It ranks 24th in population.