Tell the CFPB: Don’t throw us to the (loan) sharks!

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) leadership, under the pro-business administration, has announced plans to gut a long-awaited, commonsense rule mandating that payday, auto title and other predatory lenders check that borrowers can actually repay the loans before they are issued.  

Under the rule as first proposed, borrowers would be protected from loans that often carry interest rates of 400% or more, and that trap many in an ever-spiraling cycle of debt. These loans can be so awful that 16 states have outlawed them!

You can help protect the rule to rein in predatory loans by speaking up and telling the bureau that has “consumer protection” in its name to keep the rule as is—requiring high-cost lenders to determine that borrowers can afford to repay loans. Remind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of its mandate to protect vulnerable consumers.

Please submit your comment by May 15, 2019. Comments submitted (including names) become part of the public record.

You can write your own comment or edit the one we’ve created for you (below). We encourage you to add your own personal experience with high-cost loan(s), if applicable.

I am writing to comment on Docket #CFPB-2019-0006.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created to help, not harm, consumers—especially vulnerable cash-strapped borrowers who are preyed upon by abusive loan sharks. I was disgusted to hear that, under Kathy Kraninger’s new leadership, the Bureau is doing just the opposite and actually throwing borrowers to the sharks by destroying its already proposed rule to rein in payday, auto title and other high-cost, short-term lenders!

What is going on at the CFPB? You have “consumer protection” built into your name and mission, yet it’s clear that the only parties who will benefit from the latest proposal are the anti-consumer lenders offering products with nearly 400% average interest rates! Why are you putting the interests of predatory industries over consumers?

Gutting the central tenet of the rule—that before issuing a loan, lenders first determine if a borrower has the ability to repay (without going broke or taking out more loans)—makes absolutely no sense if the CFPB is interested in protecting consumers.

The CFPB’s commonsense payday rule was created after five years of careful research, but, outrageously, it’s being tossed aside like so many other reasonable regulations. With what little is left of the rule, you propose to again delay implementation until 2020. Don’t do it.

The Bureau can’t argue that this proposal would encourage “competition” or “consumer choice.” No sensible borrower would choose a payday loan knowing that they had other options for lower-cost loans.

Payday loans are unfair and abusive. Anyone who’s been trapped in a loan that’s jumped from, say, $200 to $2,000, and forced to take out high-cost loan after loan just to make ends meet, can attest to this fact. This is not an uncommon scenario with payday loans!

It boggles the mind how the CFPB can take this long-anticipated opportunity to modestly protect the most vulnerable Americans from predatory loans and throw it away.

Please do your job: Protect consumers and keep the payday rule as is!

There are two ways to submit your comment.

You can email the CFPB directly at:

[email protected]

Include Docket No. CFPB-2019-0006 (or RIN 3170-AA80) in the subject line. Or:

Copy and paste your comment to this page on Regulations.gov. Fill in your name at the end of the letter and click submit. (Your name and comment will become part of the public record.)

Thank you for helping protect vulnerable consumers.