Unnecessary regulation of consumer credit

According to the twis2010.com, the economic crisis in the USA is continuing to expand, the unemployment rate is increasing. Even though the President Obama has recently signed a new bill of financial protection, the situation in the country is not likely to improve soon. But with no respect to how this crisis deep is, Americans are not those people who used to give up, and still manage to have some money in stock. In its latest report the Federal Reserve System provides some figures on the customer debt. Under these figures the overall customer debt is rising, but there is one type of consumer loan that has experienced an upgrade during the last half a year. It is a payday loan, or a so called non-revolving loan, which direct payday lending companies like Pay1Day provide.

In April non-revolving loans, which consist of such types of loans as cash advance or payday loans, student loans, auto loans, have risen for $9.4 billion, which indicates a growth of 7.1% annually.  These figures describe how people do need money in the current tough situation. Americans borrow this short-term credit in order they can afford to make a purchase, buy an auto, pay for the studies in college, go to the dentist, etc. Customers take a payday loan, when they just need urgent cash till they get their salary. Customers who don’t have perfect credit record can’t receive any other types of loans. Unfortunately for them, a lot of the States in America have passed a number of legislative acts, which highly regulate and ban the operations of the payday lending companies. But these States haven’t either substitute payday loans for another type of loan, which could let “not perfect” customers borrow money for their short-term needs.

In fact, latest researches of the lending industry indicate that there are more complaints from borrowers against lenders, who just pretend to be real lenders, as well as the number of unemployed people has been increasing for the last few years in the States, which have prohibited payday lending operations. And it is possible that the same governmental policy will be established not just in some States, but throughout the whole country, as a new consumer financial protection bill is likely to be enacted. Under the bill practically all consumer financial products are to be controlled and regulated. It doesn’t depend whether they are small or big, whether they have any attitude to the economic crisis or not. Actually, the companies which have really caused the mortgage crisis are not affected by the new regulation at all.

Hopefully, the customer demand for payday credit will remain at the same high level and help to safe and protect payday lenders. In addition, in order to receive the majority of these loans a customer should have a constant job and an account in bank. So, he is considered to be a reliable and secure borrower, who will be able to pay off the loan on time. Furthermore, the lending company must inform its client about the terms and conditions of the credit when offering it to him.

If the number of consumers asking for credit is growing, probably the authorities should regulate and deal with some other serious problems instead of diminishing working places. Excessive regulation of lending industry can only worsen deplorable situation, which already exists.

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How the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will affect small businesses

The US senate has lately enacted a new bill of financial protection of customers, which has already been signed by Barack Obama. Under this bill a new consumer protection agency, named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), will be established. A number of businessmen are worried how the establishment of this Bureau, now called the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP), will affect their business. The main objective of the organization is to eliminate the consequences of the recent mortgage crisis and the economic recession, followed after that. The Bureau will control and monitor all the financial products, used by customers, even the products which have no attitude to the crisis. The measures conducted by the agency seem to be vast and are likely to affect most businesses, as well as payday lending companies like Solomon Internet Funding.

The most of the small companies care about the fact that there are practically no limitations of the power that the BCFP disposes. It seems that the agency will control all the types of loans, ranging from the loans for buying of appliances to the loans from dentistry, where customers can borrow money for purchasing braces or using some other dental services. If the bill wasn’t enacted so fast and unexpectedly for most businesses, they would have some time to examine what spheres of business and what financial products would be controlled by government in order to be ready for these new changes of regulation. Sad to say, but it didn’t happen and a number of businesses have to leave the market because of having no power to resist these severe conditions. E.g., due to the economic crises a lot of small furniture companies loss the profits because customers are trying to cut down their expenses on furniture. In order to avoid such problems companies offer their clients an alternative service. They provide a customer with a loan in-house by using the outside lending company. Through this service more than 50% of the company’s sales are conducted. The recent changes in regulation have made these alternatives very expensive, and no customer will agree on these conditions. A huge amount of small companies will have to finish their operations in numerous industries, which wasn’t prepared for the recession.

Payday lending industry is one of the most obvious examples of the strong regulation. A lot of States have already established a new annual percentage rate on payday loans, which is now 36%. This rate is much higher in comparison with other loans. On the other hand, for the $100 loan with 36% rate offered for 2 weeks lending companies can only receive $1.38. This meager money would never cover their operational expenses. Despite the fact that the new rate has made most payday lenders be similar to lending charity organizations, no State has provided further charity measures to the borrowers, whom the payday loans were given to. In his latest article attorney Hilary B. Miller deeply discusses and states his arguments why payday lending industry will survive and won’t disappear in spite of harsh regulation. These statements can be welcomed by the business owners and people engaged in the lending industry.

Although the future of many businesses is vague and doesn’t seem promising, the payday lending companies don’t lose hopes. These lenders give loans for small sums of money to those customers who don’t have reputable credit history and can’t receive loans in other places. Payday lenders just want to save their jobs and have some money in bank. Their customers are the least secure out of all the borrowers and that is why lenders need to charge them no less than $15 for the $100 loan to continue operating on the market. The number of complaints against these lenders can be decreased by common legislative acts, mostly aimed at extensions or rollovers of the loan. And if just these acts are passed, the demand for the payday loans and the number of borrowers won’t diminish, which means that the payday lending companies will go on prospering.

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