Payday Rules Relax on Trump’s Watch After Lobbying by Lenders
It will cap a year in which the industry has gone from villain to victor, the result of a concentrated lobbying campaign
that has culminated in the Trump administration’s loosening regulatory grip on payday lenders and a far friendlier approach by the industry’s nemesis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was born out of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, immediately seized on the payday lending industry as one of its first targets, opening a complaint database, initiating investigations, filing lawsuits
and formulating rules to prevent lenders from preying on consumers.
“I think now we’re in a period that is relatively passive,” said Dennis Shaul, the chief executive of the
Community Financial Services Association of America, the primary lobbying group for payday lenders.
“I’m surprised to see any efforts aggressively to roll back efforts to rein in payday lending,
because we had done extensive research on how these loans lead many people into debt traps that ruin their financial lives,” Mr. Cordray said.
This year he plans to shutter 100 more stores, despite the changes happening at the consumer bureau, because it remains unclear how far the move to deregulate the industry will go
and because state lending laws have become increasingly strict.