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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

CFPB delays underwriting compliance of Payday Rule

Agency Rule-Making & Guidance CFPB Payday Rule Courts Payday Lending Underwriting

Agency Rule-Making & Guidance

On June 6, the CFPB released a final rule to delay the August 19, 2019 compliance date for the mandatory underwriting provisions of the agency’s 2017 final rule covering “Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans” (the Rule). Compliance with these provisions of the Rule is now due by November 19, 2020.

As previously covered by InfoBytes, in February, when the CFPB released two notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) related to certain lending requirements under the Rule—one proposing the delay to the compliance date for mandatory underwriting provisions, and the other proposing to rescind the underwriting portion of the Rule that would make it an unfair and abusive practice for a lender to make covered high-interest rate, short-term loans, or covered longer-term balloon payment loans without reasonably determining that the consumer has the ability to repay—the Bureau emphasized that the NPRM extending the compliance date for mandatory underwriting provisions did not extend the effective date for the Rule’s provisions governing payments. 

Notably, on May 30, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas entered an order continuing the stay of the original compliance date for both the underwriting provisions and the payment provisions of the Rule in a payday loan trade group’s litigation challenging the Rule. (Previous InfoBytes coverage on the litigation is available here.) The order requires the parties to file a joint status report no later than August 2.