Brief: New York’s Attempt to Over-Regulate Lenders Downgraded to Doubtful

The Governor’s budget bill has encountered resistance up in Albany, sources say, specifically Part EE that aimed to amend New York’s banking law and impose sweeping licensing restrictions on all types of lending and finance. Analysts felt that the language could have vast unintended consequences beyond just online lenders, including factoring, commercial lenders and brokers, merchant cash advance and the securitization markets.

The passage of this proposal now looks doubtful. The Assembly, one of two branches of the State’s legislature, introduced their own version of the budget on March 13th and removed the language.

“The Assembly rejects the Executive proposal granting DFS regulatory authority over any online lenders doing business in New York State,” the bill says. Notably, they also rejected “the Executive proposal to authorize enforcement of Insurance, Banking, and Financial Services Law against unlicensed individual or businesses, including bringing a civil action.”

The Senate echoed same. “The Senate denies the Executive proposal to authorize the Superintendent of the Department of Financial Services to expand the regulation of small loan lenders,” their bill states.

Industry trade groups, namely the Commercial Finance Coalition (CFC), had mobilized quickly to tell their members’ stories up in Albany two weeks ago. One of the group’s concerns was that they had not been consulted in advance, nor given any time to engage in a discussion about the proposal.

“They should allow all the stakeholders to have their voices heard,” said Dan Gans, CFC’s executive director. With the proposal’s chances of making it through the final budget by the March 31st deadline waning, the group and others may finally get an opportunity to do just that at some point later in 2017. According to The CFC, they are looking for additional companies to support them in that endeavor. Anyone interested in finding out how they can help should contact Dan Gans at dgans@polariswdc.com.

Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future deBanked events here.