InfoBytes Blog
Trade group sues CFPB over payday repeal
On October 29, a national community advocate group filed a complaint against the CFPB challenging the Bureau’s repeal of the underwriting provisions of the agency’s 2017 final rule covering “Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans” (Rule). As previously covered by InfoBytes, in July, the CFPB issued a final rule revoking, among other things, the Rule’s (i) provision that makes it an unfair and abusive practice for a lender to make covered high-interest rate, short-term loans or covered longer-term balloon payment loans without reasonably determining that the consumer has the ability to repay the loans according to their terms; (ii) prescribed mandatory underwriting requirements for making the ability-to-repay determination; and (iii) the “principal step-down exemption” provision for certain covered short-term loans.
The complaint alleges that the Bureau’s repeal of the underwriting provisions of the Rule was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law.” Specifically, the complaint asserts that the Bureau invented a “new evidentiary standard” when it required that evidence supporting the need for the underwriting provisions be “robust and reliable,” which, according to the complaint, is a standard “custom-designed” to repeal the provisions. The complaint further argues that the CFPB “failed to consider the harms that consumers suffer from no-underwriting lending” and relied on analysis and data that was not “previously made available for comment.” The complaint seeks a declaration that the repeal was unlawful and an order requiring the Bureau to “take necessary steps to ensure prompt implementation of the 2017 Payday Lending Rule’s Ability-to-Repay Protections.”