In the 1990s payday lenders partnered with banks to create a practice known as Rent-a-Bank. This practice, which has now moved online, exploits a provision of federal law that allows banks to export their interest rates across the country, ignoring state laws meant to protect borrowers from abusive high-rate lending that can lead to a debt trap. Rent-a-Bank arrangements allow online lenders to exceed state limits on loans used to finance the purchase of everything from puppies to car repairs, including expensive debt consolidation loans made to people already struggling to meet their monthly...
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In the 1990s payday lenders partnered with banks to create a practice known as Rent-a-Bank. This practice exploits a provision of federal law that allows banks to export their interest rates across the country, ignoring state laws meant to protect borrowers from abusive high-rate lending that can lead to a debt trap. While predatory lenders originally used store-front payday locations when this evasion scheme began, today’s high-cost lenders have moved their tactics online under the glossy facade of fintech innovation. These lenders are now trying to adapt their abusive high-cost lending...
Payday loans, high-cost small loans averaging $350 that usually must be repaid in a single payment after two weeks, are designed to create a long-term debt trap for consumers. A 36% annual percentage rate (APR) cap on payday loans (including fees) is the best way to stop the cycle of debt. To date, 20 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws to cap payday lending rates around 36% APR or require other measures to ensure that payday lenders do not impose interest rates and financing terms that create a long-term debt trap for consumers. Since 2005, no state has authorized the...
The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) should restore cost limits for earned wage advances and other fintech cash advances under proposed regulations rather than allow a temporary registration regime with no cost limits for up to four years, the Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Federation of California, National Consumer Law Center, and Office of Kat Taylor said in comments filed with the Department on November 27. The groups “strongly support the provisions [of the proposed regulations] that make clear that income-based advances are loans and that...
Watch the recorded testimony of Mitria Spotser before United States House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services on the importance of protecting consumers in an evolving marketplace.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) or pay-in-four products allow consumers to purchase goods in four equal, often interest-free installments over a set time period (often 6 weeks). BNPL is often available directly at checkout on an e-commerce website (like Amazon or Apple) or through a third-party smartphone or web application. Examples of third-party BNPL providers include Affirm, AfterPay, Klarna, Splitit, Sezzle, Paypal, Perpay, and Quadpay/Zip. While many BNPL providers also make installment loans that carry interest, this research paper addresses only products that meet the Consumer Financial...
In a letter to the author of the Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection Act, advocates warn: "In the guise of offering protections, the bill obscures its true effect: to exempt fintech cash advances from the Truth in Lending Act, to endorse a form of loan that makes workers pay to be paid, and to facilitate new evasions by payday lenders ." The bill, currently a discussion draft, was considered as part of a House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing "Modernizing Financial Services Through Innovation and Competition," held on October 25, 2023— a hearing that the Center for Responsible...
Advocates Warn Financial Services Innovation Act Would Cause "Sahara Desert" of Consumer Protections
In a letter to the House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee, consumer advocates warn that the Financial Services Innovation Act of 2023 would facilitate evasion of existing consumer protection laws and regulations. Citing the foreclosure crisis around 2008 and other examples, the letter states: "Blind endorsement of 'innovations' leads to consumer harms." The bill, currently a discussion draft, was considered as part of a House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing "Modernizing Financial Services Through Innovation and Competition," held on October 25, 2023— a hearing that the...
Among the hottest consumer finance topics in recent years is the proliferation of online lenders offering fintech cash advances, including the subset of those lenders who offer earned wage advances (EWA). These are very short-term loans of small dollar amounts that users can access through a smartphone app. Lenders that offer these products strenuously attempt to avoid being regulated like other lenders and rely on legal fictions to assert that their loans are not credit. These lenders also typically argue that their products further financial inclusion while, in reality, the worst versions of...
States are grappling with how to regulate earned wage advances (EWAs) and other fintech cash advances that purport not to be credit. These loans often closely resemble payday loans, with fees that multiply into rates above 300% and cycles of reborrowing that result in workers paying to be paid. State legislatures and regulators should not adopt industry-backed approaches, like those recently passed in Missouri and Nevada, that carve these loans out of state credit laws, including rate caps, and lack any meaningful substitute consumer protections. Instead, at the state level, the best policy...
Many people involved in the criminal legal system live on the economic margins. Most defendants are unable to hire their own lawyer due to indigency. In North Carolina, the average person in prison doesn’t have a high school diploma. The cost of involvement in the criminal legal system can quickly add up to thousands of dollars, but the people expected to pay these costs often don’t have the financial resources to do so. Debt that results from this involvement can be difficult or impossible for them to pay off. North Carolina law provides a number of ways for court officials to attempt to...
New data from the bipartisan polling team Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting shows that voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support the ongoing mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to regulate the financial industry and protect consumers. The survey also revealed strong support for maintaining the secure, independent funding mechanism for the CFPB. These new findings are consistent with over 10 years of opinion research demonstrating strong public support for the agency’s role and work. Voters are strongly supportive of a variety of...
In September, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a lawsuit that could abruptly and permanently close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – which would not only harm consumers and businesses but would also cause economic chaos.
The income-driven repayment plan prevents unpaid interest from increasing a borrower’s loan balance, and ensures remaining balances are forgiven after a certain number of years.
Consumers are increasingly accessing small short-term loans through digital cash advance and Earned Wage Advance (EWA) online applications. Consumers can receive advance amounts up to $750 per pay period while using these apps. Some companies contract with employers to provide this product while others work directly with consumers. In the direct-to-consumer model, the advances are often marketed as “free,” but providers require a variety of fees to expedite the advance and employ pressure tactics allowing them to collect fees in the form of “tips”. These fees make advances very costly for...
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) submitted a comment in response to the federal financial regulators’ proposed rulemaking on Quality Control Standards for Automated Valuation Study after study has found ongoing, significant undervaluation of homes in communities of color and owned by people of color. Due to decades of past and ongoing discrimination, homes in Black communities and homes owned by Black people are consistently undervalued, contributing to the racial wealth gap. Although some have argued that AVMs can eliminate...
CRL submitted a comment on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Single Family Pricing Framework arguing that the FHFA should take three steps: Revisit and revise the Enterprise Regulatory Capital Framework, which currently imposes excessive capital requirements on the GSEs; Continue the forward momentum of its recent elimination of LLPA’s for first-time homebuyers and certain affordable housing products by expanding its efforts to reach minority borrowers with increased marketing outreach, special purpose credit programs, etc., and Eliminate upfront guarantee fees for first-generation...
The undersigned organizations wrote in strong support of the Bureau’s proposed rule applying Regulation Z to Residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans. In the proposed rule, the Bureau correctly recognizes that PACE financing fundamentally acts as mortgage credit, yet is provided by underregulated or unsupervised entities that often exploit the lien priority granted to tax assessments. As a result, residential PACE financing should be subject to the same regulations that apply to first-lien mortgages. The rule, if enacted, will significantly limit the well-documented abuses that...
With nearly 45 million Americans owing 1.7 trillion dollars in student loan debt, the Department’s intent to establish a negotiated rulemaking committee to examine proposals under the waiver, modification, and compromise authority is critical to increasing fairness and affordability for those who must accrue debt to pursue higher education. The sheer scale of the student loan debt crisis in America—and its disproportionate and, often, inequitable, impact on borrowers of color—compels us to urge the Department to use this negotiated rulemaking to develop and put in place a series of strong...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a Policy Statement on Abusive Acts and Practices and invited comments from the public. The Center for Responsible Lending applauds the CFPB for its efforts to further clarify abusive acts and practices. The Center further offers insights into how the statement may be strengthened to clarify the ways these acts take unreasonable advantage of a consumer’s inability to protect their interests in selecting or using a product.
This factsheet outlines how H.R. 3564, which would reverse recent FHFA updates to mortgage pricing, would leave borrowers and taxpayers less financially secure.
Millions of Americans continue to experience financial precarity, and this report illustrates how payday and car-title lending extract financial resources from communities across the United States.
Payday lenders charge exorbitant fees to borrowers without assessing their ability to repay, and the annual interest rates on these loans are in the triple digits.
From the letter: We strongly believe many of the reforms being considered today will harm consumers and the financial markets. These misguided approaches will place every American taxpayer at risk by increasing the likelihood that our nation’s economy may suffer yet another financial crisis. There are two proposals that are especially concerning. The first increases the asset thresholds at which financial institutions become subject to regulatory oversight. There are more than 4,000 banks in the United States, and this legislative draft would exempt all but 50 from having to comply with...
From the letter: We strongly believe many of the reforms being considered today will harm consumers and the financial markets. These misguided approaches will place every American taxpayer at risk by increasing the likelihood that our nation’s economy may suffer yet another financial crisis. There are two proposals that are especially concerning. The first increases the asset thresholds at which financial institutions become subject to regulatory oversight. There are more than 4,000 banks in the United States, and this legislative draft would exempt all but 50 from having to comply with...