The California Business Loan & MCA Disclosure Bill Has Passed

The bill has passed. With the governor’s signature, all business loan contracts and merchant cash advance contracts in California will soon require a uniform set of formal disclosures including an annualized rate of the total cost. The precise formula for that rate will be determined by the state’s regulatory agency, the Department of Business Oversight.

Update: The bill’s death in committee was challenged by the bill’s author, Senator Steve Glazer, and ultimately allowed to come up for a vote after he complained to the senate majority leader that a committee’s decision is merely a recommendation, not a deciding factor on the bill itself. At 2:10 AM EST, it passed.

Update: The bill has died in the Senate Banking Committee. Daniel Weintraub, who serves as chief of staff to the bill’s author, tweeted after midnight eastern time that the bill was not moving forward.

Update: The bill passed the Assembly unopposed and is slated for a late night vote by the Senate Banking Committee.

Update 8/31/18: Today is the last day for the legislature to pass this bill. We will keep you updated

California’s bill to mandate certain disclosures on business loan and merchant cash advance contracts is looking a little bit worse. The Annualized Cost of Capital method (Explained here) that some folks in the industry were accepting of, has been scrapped in favor of whatever formula a state regulator decides to pick. That means if the Commissioner of Business Oversight decides on an APR disclosure, which many industry trade groups believed they had already successfully lobbied against, all loans and non-loans alike would have to report an APR, a mathematical impossibility for a product like merchant cash advance. At present, however, all that is known is that the Commissioner’s choice must be an annualized metric.

According to Bloomberg, the amended version of the bill needs to get approval in both the Assembly and the Senate by Friday before the legislative session ends.

Trade associations that have weighed in on this bill include the Electronic Transactions Association, Commercial Finance Coalition, Small Business Finance Association, and the Innovative Lending Platform Association.

You can view all of our previous coverage about the bill here.