SBA’s Office of Advocacy Goes to Bat for Payday Lenders

What’s the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy doing advocating for payday lenders? Well they’re small businesses first and foremost, according to a letter submitted to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, and the CFPB’s short-term lending proposal puts them at risk.

Coming in at a cool 1,341 pages, the proposal no doubt exudes costly compliance. And it’s not just lawyers and compliance officers that payday lenders need to worry about, they’re also asked to forfeit some of their major profit centers, a condition that has left many of them outraged. In a roundtable convened by the Office of Advocacy, “some [short-term lenders] stated that they may experience revenue reductions of greater than 70 percent and be forced to exit the market.”

The CFPB has more-or-less acknowledged these steep revenue loss projections and if you read between the lines, having these companies be forced to exit the market seems to be the unspoken consequence they’re probably hoping for.

But at what cost?

“The CFPB’s proposed rule may force legitimate businesses to cease operation,” The Office of Advocacy argues. “Imposing such a regulation will not alleviate a consumer’s financial situation. The consumer will still need to pay his/her bills and other expenses. Imposing these strict regulations may deprive consumers of a means of addressing their financial situation.”