Do You Support Protections for Payday Lenders?

What’s the story?

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to abolish rules that would have required payday lenders to vet whether borrowers can repay their loans and cap the number of loans lenders could make to a borrower.
• The bureau’s new director, Kathleen Kraninger, proposed eliminating this “ability to repay” standard, saying there was “insufficient evidence and legal support” for the provision.
• The rules were crafted during the Obama administration after the CFPB found that low-income borrowers could wind up trapped in a cycle of high-interest loans, ending up with the equivalent of a 300 percent interest rate.

What are payday loans?

• As CNN Money explained: "Payday loans provide those in need with small amounts of cash—typically between $200 and $1,000. The money needs to be paid back in full when a borrower receives his or her next paycheck, and such loans often come with exorbitantly high interest rates."

What are both sides saying?

• Richard Cordray, the bureau’s former director who finalized the rules in his final weeks in office, said the CFPB has gone too far.

“CFPB is proposing to unwind the core part of its payday loan rule - that the lender must reasonably assess a borrower’s ability to repay before making a loan. It’s a bad move that will hurt the hardest-hit consumers. It should be and will be subject to a stiff legal challenge.”

• The CFPB argued in a statement that the bureau believes abolishing the rule will increase consumers’ access to credit, something that would not happen if the rules were allowed to go into effect.

“The Bureau is concerned that these provisions would reduce access to credit and competition in states that have determined that it is in their residents’ interests to be able to use such products, subject to state-law limitations,” the agency said in its statement.

• Back when the rollback was first being floated, critics of the payday lending rule had also argued its enforcement would devastate the industry—and consumer options.

"The CFPB's decision to revisit its small-dollar rule is welcomed news for the millions of American consumers experiencing financial hardship and in need of small-dollar credit," Richard Hunt, the president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association, said in a statement.

What do you think?

Should the CFPB roll back the payday lending rule? Take action above and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / EHStock)