Via Electronic Submission

The Honorable Richard CordrayConsumer Financial Protection Bureau1700 G Street NWWashington

Re: Proposed rulemaking on payday, car name, and specific high-cost installment loans, Docket No.

Dear Director Cordray:

We, the 131 signatories for this page, represent a diverse cross-section of elected officials, federal government, work, grassroots arranging, civil legal rights, appropriate solutions, faith-based along with other community companies, in addition to community development finance institutions. We respectfully request that the CFPB count this page as 131 remarks.

Together, we urge one to issue a solid payday lending rule that ends the loan debt trap that is payday. While the CFPB makes to issue a last guideline to deal with payday financing nationwide, we urge you to not undermine our state’s longstanding civil and criminal usury regulations. Certainly, we urge you to definitely issue a guideline that improves our current defenses.

Once the CFPB truly acknowledges, a summary of signatories of the magnitude and breadth just isn’t you need to take lightly. This letter reflects the position greater than 38 state and neighborhood elected officials, the NYC Department of customer Affairs, the Progressive Caucus of this NYC Council – also as 92 companies that represent a diverse spectral range of communities, views, and constituents. We have been worried that the CFPB is poised to issue a weak rule that wouldn’t normally only set a reduced club for the whole nation, but that will also straight undermine our state’s longstanding ban on payday financing.

As New Yorkers, we think we now have a perspective that is especially relevant share. Significantly more than 90 million Americans – nearly a 3rd regarding the country – real time in states like nyc where lending that is payday illegal. Our experience demonstrably demonstrates that: (1) folks are means best off without payday lending; and (2) the simplest way to address abusive payday lending, along with other types of predatory high-cost lending, is always to put a finish to it forever.

As proposed, the CFPB’s payday financing guideline is filled up with loopholes and would effectively sanction high-cost loans which are unlawful inside our state and lots of other jurisdictions in the nation. We turn to the CFPB to issue a stronger rule that is final does maybe maybe not undermine New York’s longstanding usury as well as other customer protection laws and regulations. We urge one to set a top club for the whole country and issue a rule that enhances, and will not undermine, our current defenses. We turn to the CFPB to make use of its complete authority to issue the strongest feasible final guideline that will certainly end the pay day loan financial obligation trap.

The lending that is payday has thrived because more and more people within our nation don’t have enough earnings to pay for their fundamental cost of living. The thing that is last people need are predatory, high-cost loans that dig them into a straight much deeper hole — just what happens now in states that allow payday financing. Certainly, numerous New Yorkers have been in economic stress, struggling to help make ends satisfy from paycheck to paycheck (or government advantages check to federal government benefits check), together with undeniable fact that we usually do not allow payday financing right here has proven crucial to protecting a large section associated with the populace from monetary exploitation. Where lending that is payday legitimately allowed, the industry has targeted black and Latino communities, draining vast sums of bucks and perpetuating the racial wide range gap when you look at the U.S.

In a nutshell, we start thinking about ourselves exceedingly lucky to reside and work with a state that bans lending that is payday. Our centuries-old usury law makes it a felony to charge a lot more than 25 % interest on that loan. Maintaining payday financing out of brand new York has furnished vast advantageous assets to New Yorkers, regional communities together with state economy most importantly. Every year, as an example, our state’s law that is usury New Yorkers more or less $790 million which they would otherwise expend on charges for unaffordable payday and automobile name loans.1

Despite these clear benefits, payday lenders have for several years tried to crack open our usury legislation and also make predatory lending that is high-cost in our state. Seeing an untapped, profitable market they might exploit in nyc, the payday financing and look cashing trade teams have actually over over over and over repeatedly forced our state legislature to legalize high-cost payday along with other types of harmful financing. Over and over, these efforts have actually pitted the interest that is public predatory financing passions, ultimately causing unsightly battles between community teams and industry, and draining massive general general public resources in the act. Luckily, we now have successfully beat straight right straight back these tries to gut our usury legislation, many thanks in big measure to effective advocacy by a broad coalition of community, work, and civil legal rights teams, which has guaranteed that payday financing continues to be unlawful within our state.

We have been well mindful that the CFPB might not set rates of interest, nevertheless the agency can and may make use of its complete authority to simply simply take strong action. Missing strong action that is federal stopping payday lending, including payday installment financing, will still be a game title of whack-a-mole.

We have been extremely concerned that the weak CFPB rule will play straight into the arms associated with lending that is payday, supplying it with ammo necessary to defeat strong rules like we now have in nyc. Certainly, in Pennsylvania and Georgia, the lending that is payday go has apparently utilized the CFPB’s 2015 blueprint for the rule, suggesting to convey legislators that the CFPB has offered its stamp of approval to high-cost payday and payday-like loans.

The proposed guideline contains a list that is long of and exceptions that raise major issues for the company. We highly urge the CFPB, at the very least, to:

• Need a“ability that is meaningful repay” standard that is applicable to all the loans, without exceptions sufficient reason for no safe harbors or appropriate immunity for poorly underwritten loans. The “ability to repay” supply should need consideration of both earnings and costs, and declare that loans which do not fulfill a significant power to repay standard are per se unjust, unsafe, and unsound. a poor CFPB rule enabling loan providers which will make unaffordable loans or which includes a safe harbor would not just provide for continued exploitation of individuals struggling to create ends satisfy. It might additionally provide payday loan providers unwarranted ammo to knock down current state defenses, while they have already been aggressively trying to do for decades.

• Fortify the enforceability of strong state customer security guidelines, by giving that providing, making, facilitating, servicing, or collecting loans that violate state usury or other customer security rules is an unjust, misleading, and act that is abusive practice (UDAAP) under federal legislation. The CFPB’s success in deploying its UDAAP authority against payday loan providers such as for example CashCall – which a court that is federal discovered had involved in UDAAPs by servicing and gathering on loans that have been void or uncollectible under state legislation, and that the borrowers consequently would not owe – as well as against loan companies, re re payment processors, and lead generators, provides a solid legal foundation for including this explicit dedication in its payday financing guideline. In so doing, the CFPB helps guarantee the viability and enforceability regarding the guidelines that presently protect people in payday loan-free states from unlawful financing. That servicing or collecting on loans that are void or uncollectible under state law are UDAAPs under federal law at the very least, the CFPB should provide, in accordance with the court’s decision against CashCall.

Our company is profoundly worried that weaknesses within the proposed guideline will inevitably be observed as sanctioning high-cost loans being unlawful in nyc. a guideline that undercuts guidelines that protect tens of millions of Americans in payday loan-free states will not, within our view, represent sound public policy-making, even though the guideline mitigates a few of the harms due to payday lending in states where it is currently appropriate. numerous teams are discussing the proposed rule as handling the worst abuses of payday lending. Offered the agency’s clear mandate, and provided all we realize about payday financing, why isn’t the CFPB seeking to deal with most of the abuses of payday financing?

Families inside our state — and everywhere — are best off without these high-cost, unaffordable loans. We urge the CFPB to issue the strongest rule that is possible without loopholes.