CRL in the News

Listen to an interview with CRL's Rebecca Borné on the Money Life podcast discussing U.S. Bank’s new dangerous payday loan alternative product, Simple Loan.

Consumer advocates for years have decried payday loans as a costly way to borrow and one that keeps people trapped in a cycle of high-interest debt. The howls of protest could grow louder now than a major bank has stepped forward with a similar product.

U.S. Bank, one of the country’s biggest banks, has again begun offering customers small, high-cost loans, saying the loans now have safeguards to help keep borrowers from getting in over their heads. The loans, between $100 and $1,000, are meant to help customers deal with unexpected expenses, like a car repair or a medical bill, said Lynn Heitman, executive vice president of U.S. Bank consumer banking sales and support. But the fees equate to an annual interest rate of about 70 percent.

A provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law aimed at fair lending for minority and women-owned small businesses is unlikely to move forward, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. Banks and other small-business lenders have sometimes balked at the requirement the law sets for them to collect information. Yet Scott Astrada, director of federal advocacy for the Center for Responsible Lending, argued that fulfilling the rule wouldn’t be burdensome to banks and nonbank lenders, which he says already collect much of the information.

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank last week began offering a small-dollar loan product called Simple Loan that charges interest rates ranging from more than 70 percent to almost 88 percent. "This type of product isn't a safe alternative to a payday loan," Rebecca Borne, senior policy counsel at the center, said in a statement. "And we reject the notion that bank loans as high as 70 [percent] to 88 percent [annual percentage rate] will drive out higher-priced credit by nonbanks."

If you’ve defaulted on a federal student loan, beware: The federal government can take up to 15 percent of your Social Security benefit. The number of people 60 and older with student loan debt quadrupled from 700,000 to 2.8 million between 2005 and 2015, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), threatening financial stability for those heading into retirement. And in fiscal year 2015 alone, almost 114,000 borrowers age 50 and older had Social Security benefits seized to repay defaulted federal student loans, according to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report.

The trade group representing payday lenders has asked a court for an injunction to block implementation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) small dollar loan rule. The CFPB small dollar loan rule is scheduled to take effect next year, but a larger threat to payday lenders may come in the form of competing products from traditional banks. Last week, U.S. Bank rolled out its Simple Loan, which charges a similar fee for a small dollar loan but gives the borrower three months, instead of two weeks, to pay it back. While the move has been cheered by many consumer advocates, the

Consumer advocates say strong reforms are needed to better regulate the payday lending industry in Michigan, and they just might have the data to prove it. A new report from the Center for Responsible Lending found that in the past five years, payday lenders have taken more than half a billion dollars in fees from consumers in Michigan, including $94 million in 2016. Senior Policy Specialist with the Community Economic Development Association of Michigan Jessica AcMoody said with annual percentage rates in the triple digits, low-income customers often struggle to repay loans on time.

U.S. Bank says it will offer nearly instant small loans to its customers, becoming the first bank to provide such a product since federal regulators cleared the way earlier this year amid continuing concerns over the costs of payday loans. Graciela Aponte-Diaz of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending said she’s particularly concerned about U.S. Bank customers who take out larger loans under the new program because borrowers only have three months to repay. “It’s dangerous for a loan of $500 or $1,000,” she said. “Three months is not very long to come up with that much money.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to revive a program that would allow companies to experiment with new forms of disclosures without facing regulatory penalties. The CFPB could allow for disclosure innovation without giving up its enforcement and oversight tools, Scott Astrada, the director of federal advocacy at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Bloomberg Law in a Sept. 7 phone interview. “It’s far end of the spectrum of possible ways to tweak or improve things,” he said.