Articles by deBanked Staff
Coleman Report’s Bob Coleman is Out With a New Book: “Easy Money, Hard Time”
July 18, 2025
Bob Coleman, founder of Coleman Report, the leading provider of information to small business bankers to help them make less risky small business loans, recently authored a book. Titled Easy Money, Hard Time: 19-Covid PPP Loan Fraud Stories, the book dives into “the most shocking cases of PPP loan fraud, exposing the audacity, greed, and recklessness of those who saw an economic disaster as a chance to cash in.”
Coleman has also previously authored PPP Saves Millions of Main Street Jobs During Covid (2022) and Money, Money Everywhere But Not a Drop for Main Street (2011).
Coleman’s premium content trade newsletter began in 1993 and it provides critical analytical information for today’s small business lending professional. They are the largest producer of training courses and webinars for small business bankers.
Bob Coleman will be moderating a panel on SBA lending at the B2B Finance Expo in Las Vegas this October.
Block: Potential JPM Bank Account Data Access Fees Will Have No Impact to Our ‘Borrow’ Model
July 17, 2025Borrow, short-term consumer loan program by Cash App, will not be affected by fees JPMorgan intends to charge fintechs for bank account data access. That’s because Block’s Cash App doesn’t even need the data.
“Across Block we’ve been deliberate in how we’ve built products, leveraging internal data when we can to deliver value to our customers,” the company said in response to the JPM announcement. “For example, to date: the vast majority of Borrow volume has been underwritten using only Cash App data and less than 1% of U.S. BNPL GMV is paid back via ACH. While we can’t comment on the future, historically, our fees paid to data aggregators have been de-minimis.”
JPMorgan Plans to Charge Fees to Fintechs to Get Customer Bank Account Data
July 16, 2025After Bloomberg News revealed that JPMorgan was planning to charge fintechs to access their customer bank account data, CEO Jamie Dimon was questioned about this during the bank’s latest quarterly earnings call. Dimon said that this was a customer-driven decision designed to protect them.
“So we think the customer has the right to if they want to share their information. What we ask people to do is do they do they actually know what’s being shared? What is actually being shared? It should be everything. It should be what their customer wants. It should have a time limit because some of these things went on for years. It should not be remarketed or resold to third parties. And so we’re kind of in favor of all that done properly.
And then the payment, it just costs a lot of money to set up the APIs and stuff like that to run the system protection. So we just think it should be done and done right. And that’s the main part. It’s not like you can’t do it. The last thing is a liability shift. I don’t think JPMorgan should be responsible if you’ve given your bank passcodes to third parties who market and do a whole bunch of stuff with it, and then you get scammed or fraud through them, they should be responsible. And we want real clarity about that. And if you see today, lot of these scams and frauds run through third party social media and stuff like that, there should be a little more responsibility on their part so we could all do a better job for the customer. That’s why.
There’s a debate brewing as to whether or not this move is actually designed to serve the customer. The American Fintech Council (AFC), for example, said that it’s actually designed to accomplish the opposite and that it would hurt consumers and borrowers alike.
“Consumers have a right to their own financial data, full stop,” said AFC CEO Phil Goldfeder. “Any effort to restrict or monetize access to consumer-permissioned financial information is a direct threat to responsible innovation, healthy competition, and the progress we’ve made toward a more inclusive financial system.”
Just a few months earlier, Dimon hinted in a bank shareholder letter that such a move would be defensive and that a fight with the fintechs monetizing their data was on the horizon.
“Banks provide fantastic services, and it’s time to defend ourselves – in the public realm or in court if need be,” he said. “Now a new battle is brewing: Third parties want full access to banks’ customer data so they can exploit it for their own purposes and profits.”
“Grok, Read My ISO Agreement”
July 14, 2025
Before having an attorney review an ISO agreement, consider having an intelligent LLM AI take a look at it and alert you to any immediate red flags. After all, some accusations of purported funder improprieties these days are actually rooted in actions well within the rights of the funder in the ISO agreements. D’oh! But if such agreements are too long or too legalese-sounding for you to make an immediate judgment, LLMs like ChatGPT-o3 or Grok4 or Claude or Gemini etc have become so adept at understanding a subject and communicating in a way that the user understands, that perhaps it’s worth having them take a look. (Maybe even at your existing agreements!)
For example, deBanked obtained a 15-page ISO agreement and asked Grok4 a bunch of casual questions. One of them was, “can this funder backdoor my deals?” Surprisingly, it named some weaknesses and loopholes that the broker should be aware of even if they were not easily exploitable. On the other hand, this ISO agreement already had some broker protections built in that the LLM pointed out, such as an in-house funding clause where the broker would be paid the commission if their submitted deal was funded by the funder’s in-house sales team within 30 days of the broker having submitted it. Did you know they had an in-house sales team?!?! Grok4 did!
Grok4 also gave me the heads up that there’s a 30-day clawback period and that my future renewal commissions would be forfeited if I were to be terminated for cause. Ironically, the LLM also gave me some unsolicited advice, telling me to diversify my funders and to watermark my docs “as per the new tool.” When I asked what tool it was even talking about, it specified Aquamark, which appeared on this site just a few months ago. Grok4 also said to use deBanked, lol. Thanks!
Recommendations to Protect Yourself
Operational Steps: Timestamp submissions, watermark docs (as per the new tool), and require written confirmations for all merchant interactions. Diversify funders.
Contract Tweaks: Negotiate for audit rights, higher breach penalties, or tech tracking of merchant contacts. Extend non-interference to 3-5 years (common in MCA).
Industry Tools: Join broker networks or use platforms like deBanked for alerts on shady funders.
Curious what your ISO agreements say? I used Grok4 for this experiment. Of course, you should actually be using a lawyer for a real assessment. Here’s a list of some to get you started.
CA Debt Settlement Bill is Amended to Exclude MCAs, Factoring and Only Include Loans
July 11, 2025After deBanked reported on a commercial financing debt settlement bill moving its way through the state legislature in California, a committee promptly revised the whole thing to specify that it should be for commercial loans only. The language was revised to remove its applicability to “accounts receivable purchase transactions, including factoring, asset-based lending transactions, or lease financing transactions.”
The most recent version of the bill can be viewed here.
Troutman Pepper Locke Podcast Talks Biz Financing and Impact of Legislative Changes in Texas and Louisiana
July 10, 2025Troutman Pepper Locke attorneys Carlin McCrory, Jason Cover, and Caleb Rosenberg talked small business financing, the recent changes in Texas and Louisiana, and what is likely to come next. The discussion took place prior to the Texas bill being signed by the governor there but provides insights on it that still apply.
You can listen to it here:
Brendan Ross Sentenced to 40 Months in Prison
July 9, 2025Brendan Ross, once the darling hedge fund manager of alternative small business lending, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud. Ross was indicted five years ago in 2020 for a scheme he carried out through his firm Direct Lending Investments.
“Ross allegedly caused the monthly asset values of the funds to be cumulatively inflated by over $300 million over the course of about four years,” the original indictment stated. “By fraudulently inflating the value of the funds, Ross was able to collect millions of dollars in fees he otherwise would not have been able to charge to clients, according to the indictment.”
Ironically, clues about Ross’s scheme surfaced in a 2017 tell-all book authored by an entrepreneur that had borrowed money from his fund. When the author broke the news that his lending business was going bust, Ross reportedly told him: “I am like, literally staring over the edge. My life is over.”
Approximately one year later, Ross resigned from his own firm and the company went into receivership.
California Bill Seeks to Rein in Debt Settlement Companies That Target MCAs / Business Loan Borrowers
July 7, 2025AB-1166 in California has been quietly moving through the legislature in California since February. The bill seeks to amend the Fair Debt Settlement Practices Act to include commercial financing recipients with consumer borrowers as a covered and protected group. Per the bill, “Commercial Financing means an accounts receivable purchase transaction, including factoring, asset-based lending transaction, commercial loan, commercial open-end credit plan, or lease financing transaction intended by the recipient for use primarily for other than personal, family, or household purposes.”
If it became law, debt settlement providers would be prohibited from engaging in misleading practices, have to provide specific disclosures, allow the business owner to cancel the debt settlement agreement at any time, have to provide monthly statements, itemize their compensation, and more.
The full text can be read here. It recently passed through the Senate Banking and Financial Institutions committee on July 2.
