Amicus Brief in Support of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s Lawsuit Against Navient Corporation

Currently in the United States, approximately 43 million people owe over $1.4 trillion on their federal student loans. Americans owe more in student loan debt than for auto loans, credit cards, or any other non-mortgage debt.2 Student loan servicers play a critical role in these borrowers’ financial lives, from receiving and applying payments to interacting with struggling borrowers to facilitate repayment and prevent default. A competent servicer can assist financially distressed borrowers in accessing income-driven repayment (“IDR”). Unfortunately, servicer misrepresentations can increase...

Pa. advocates line up against Trump’s predatory changes to payday lending rules

Source
John L. Micek | Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Advocates from across the country are sounding off on what they say are efforts by the Trump administration to weaken protections against predatory payday lending, which sees borrowers pay skyrocketing interest rates, locking them into an inescapable cycle of debt. Under a rule set to go into effect later this year, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will rescind an Obama-era requirement that lenders first determine a borrower’s ability to pay before they give them a loan. That’s a “fundamental principle of responsible lending,” a coalition of advocates said this week.

These students borrowed $35K plus for an unaccredited program that closed. Years later, their debts remain

Source
Bob Fernandez | The Philadelphia Inquirer
As graduation approached and they started looking for jobs in 2010, Jacqueline Franklin, Jami Reichardt, Bridgette Collins, and about 14 other women at the Sanford Brown Institute in Trevose came to a harsh realization: Their for-profit school wasn’t accredited for its ultrasound program even though they had each borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from the federal government to go there.

States without Payday and Car‐title Lending Save $5 Billion in Fees Annually

Payday and car title loans are small-dollar, high-cost products that thrive on keeping consumers in a cycle of debt. With lenders doing essentially no underwriting, consumers find it easy to obtain these loans, often marketed as a solution to financial emergency. However, the unaffordability of the loan and the lenders extreme leverage over the borrowers – either through direct access to the bank account or threatening repossession of the borrower’s car - makes it very difficult to escape a cycle of debt that can last months, if not years. Debt trap products often lead to other financial harms...