When the National Consumer Law Center published the report Installment Loans: Will States Protect borrowers From a New Wave of Predatory Lending? in July 2015, predatory installment lenders were moving into the states, seeking statutory authority to make consumer installment loans at sky-high interest rates. The report analyzed which states allowed high-cost installment lending and which did not, but warned that state laws that protect citizens from predatory high-cost lending were under attack. Since then, battles have raged around the country. In state after state, high-cost lenders sought to weaken state laws that protect consumers from predatory installment loans by non-banks. Typically the lenders pushing these proposals have been payday lenders, seeking to double down on the types of predatory loans offered in the states. Consumers and their advocates fought back, trying not only to defeat bills that would open the floodgates to predatory loans but also to tighten up existing state laws, which our 2015 report showed were often full of loopholes.
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