ICYMI: Top payday industry lawyer calls Trump-CFPB payday protection rollback plan “three-run homer”
Please see American Banker piece below; reaction from Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Allied Progress:
“While no one took the payday industry’s trade group seriously when they criticized the Trump-Kraninger proposal to scrap the ability-to-repay standard, it’s refreshing in a way to hear a top payday industry lawyer publicly gloat what a generous gift it is for them – or a “three-run homer” in Jeremy Rosenblum’s words. If Trump gets his way and takes away this critical protection from the payday debt trap, the CFSA will be wiping away their crocodile tears with all the money they will keep making off of vulnerable communities. We just wish CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger would also dispense with the charade that her payday protection rollback plan is benefitting anyone other than Trump’s payday industry donor friends. They aren’t fooling anyone.”
American Banker: CFPB’s payday rule rollback sows confusion
By Kate Berry
March 04 2019, 9:00pm EST
Small-dollar lenders won a huge victory last month when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed abandoning tough new underwriting requirements before they become effective. But the agency’s reversal is stoking confusion in the industry.
The agency’s Trump administration-appointed leadership has long sought to roll back the payday lending rule drafted by former CFPB Director Richard Cordray. To do that, the agency’s strategy is to focus on repealing the central provision: mandated steps for verifying a borrower’s ability to repay a loan. Yet the bureau’s Feb. 6 proposal left intact other components of the Cordray regulation that restrict how lenders debit a consumer’s bank account to pay off debt.
[…]
“Having the payment provision creates some problems,” said [Jeremy T.] Rosenblum [a partner at Ballard Spahr], but he added that eliminating the underwriting requirements is like “a three-run homer instead of a grand slam” for the industry.
If the payment provisions are “the price for revocation of” ability-to-repay, “it’s a price well worth paying,” Rosenblum said.
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