From Michael Flores, CEO, Bretton Woods Inc. Mgmt Consulting Firm
Used with author’s permission
The “credit crunch” isn’t just about mortgages and large corporations. It’s also about people needing $200 or $300 to get through to their next payday. It means going to pawnbrokers, credit unions, banks, payday lenders and other financial services that make small loans.
As Congress considers legislation to regulate short-term credit — Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) recently held a hearing on payday loan reform legislation, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) have introduced a 36 percent annual interest rate cap bill — they should tread very carefully.
It’s just not that simple to regulate a $100 billion short-term credit market made up of a diverse group of products that charge different rates and are of various term lengths. A payday loan, for example, is typically two weeks, installment loans are three months, and pawn loan lengths vary.
Recently, I wrote a report revealing that banks are the largest players in the short-term credit market through “bounced check fees” and overdraft protection. In fact, banks garner $34.7 billion in revenue from these products.
When a consumer does not have enough money in his or her checking account to pay a bill, they have the option of bouncing a check, using overdraft protection, getting a payday loan, paying the bill late or borrowing from another institution, primarily credit card advances, all of which come at a price.
The FDIC reports that the average amount of a check written to overdraw a bank account is $66. For that $66 check transaction, a customer would pay an average of $27 in overdraft protection fees. Customers without overdraft protection would pay a non-sufficient funds/bounced check fee averaging $28.95, plus incur additional fees upwards of $30 from the merchant to whom they wrote the bad check. In comparison, a customer who took out a $66 payday advance to cover the cost would pay a fee ranging from $9.90 to $11.22.
The 36 percent APR cap proposed by Sen. Durbin and Rep. Speier would leave some of these products banned (payday loans), some advantaged (bounced check fees) and some untouched (some installment loans). That’s because the shorter the length of the loan term, the higher the theoretical annual percentage rate, even if the actual costs are the same.
The Gutierrez bill has some good disclosure language, but it sets payday lending fees at $15 per $100 loaned. It sounds reasonable but why shouldn’t an industry be able to raise prices as costs — rent, salaries, taxes — go up?
The goal of any federal legislation should be to ensure that consumers have choice, the market has competition and that there’s enough transparency of all products so that cost comparisons are easy to make. Arbitrary rate caps simply pick winners and losers.
Saint Simons Island, Ga.
Published in “The Hill” Copyright 2009 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp
