The California State Legislature provided commercial lenders with welcome news this week when the California Senate passed Senate Bill 577 (“SB 577”). If it is signed by the governor, SB 577 will reinstate the de minimis exemption from the California Financing Law (“CFL”) for lenders making a single commercial loan of $5,000 or more in
Daniel Pearson
Recent Student Loan Licensing Developments: Kentucky to License Student Loan Servicers, Virginia Narrows Scope of Existing Law
Earlier this month, both Kentucky and Virginia enacted significant legislation related to student loan servicing. Kentucky joined the ever-growing list of states to pass legislation regulating student loan servicing activities while Virginia pared back its existing student loan servicing law.
Kentucky’s new Student Education Loan Servicing, Licensing, and Protection Act of 2022 (“KY Law”) will…
Virginia Enacts Merchant Cash Advance Registration and Disclosure Law
On April 11, 2022, Virginia became the second US state to require providers of merchant cash advance (“MCA”) products to obtain a state regulatory license or registration—hot on the heels of Utah. With Governor Glenn Youngkin’s signing House Bill 1027 into law, companies providing “sales-based financing” in Virginia will now be required to provide up-front…
Utah Enacts Commercial Financing Disclosure Law with a Registration Obligation
Utah has followed California and New York by enacting its own Truth in Lending-like commercial financing disclosure law, but with an additional twist—Utah’s new law has a registration requirement. On March 24, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed SB 183 into law, with an effective date of January 1, 2023. We discuss how this new law…
Marketplace Lender’s Lawsuit Against California DFPI Challenges “True Lender” Recharacterization
Marketplace lender Opportunity Financial, LLC has gone on the offensive against the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation to protect its bank partnership program against challenge on a “true lender” theory. On March 7, 2022, OppFi filed suit against the DFPI to ask the state court to declare that FinWise Bank, a Utah-chartered bank,…
NYDFS Issues Pre-Proposed Rules to Implement New Commercial Financing Disclosure Law
The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has issued “pre-proposed” rules under New York’s commercial financing disclosure law that was enacted at the end of 2020. The pre-proposed rules are 45 pages long and were posted on the NYDFS website on September 21. Comments on the pre-proposed rules are due by October 1. There will be a longer comment period once a proposed rule is published in the State Register. The NYDFS aims to finalize the rules before the law takes effect on January 1, 2022.
The pre-proposed rules give the state’s commercial financing disclosure law, colloquially known as the “NY TILA,” the formal name of the “Commercial Finance Disclosure Law (CFDL).” The pre-proposed rules also define terms and provide detailed requirements for the content and formatting of the CFDL-required disclosures. The proposed definitions borrow heavily from, but do not exactly mirror, those under the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation’s (DPFI) proposed rules to implement its own commercial financing disclosure law. The lack of uniformity between the two states’ regulations will complicate compliance for commercial financers subject to both laws. Where the NYDFS rules borrow most substantially from the California rules, the NYDFS tends to draw from the prior version of those rules, before the DFPI’s second round of modifications issued August 9, 2021. This raises the question of whether the NYDFS will incorporate California’s latest modifications when the NYDFS issues the next version of its proposed rules.
Continue Reading NYDFS Issues Pre-Proposed Rules to Implement New Commercial Financing Disclosure Law
Illinois Imposes 36% Rate Cap
On March 23, 2021, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed into law Senate Bill 1792, enacting the Predatory Loan Prevention Act (PLPA) and capping interest at an “all-in” 36% APR (similar to the Military Lending Act’s MAPR) for a variety of consumer financing, effective immediately. The PLPA uses an expansive definition of interest, applies to…
New York Expands Coverage of Commercial Financing Disclosure
As expected, New York has broadened the reach of its new commercial financing disclosure law less than two months after its enactment.
S.B. 5470 imposed a range of Truth in Lending-like disclosure requirements on a variety of commercial financing transactions. On February 16, 2021, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed S.B. 898 into law, clarifying…
NY Enacts TILA-Like Disclosure Law for Business Loans and Purchases of Receivables (Factors, MCA Providers, Fintechs, Commercial Lenders—Take Note)
In late December 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed S.B. 5470 into law, which will impose a range of Truth in Lending Act-like disclosure requirements on providers of commercial financing in amounts of $500,000 or less. The law will have a significant impact on providers beyond traditional commercial lenders, as it broadly defines “commercial…
The Debt Collection “Overhaul” Is Officially Here: CFPB Issues Final Rule Implementing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
On October 30, 2020, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a final rule, Regulation F, to implement the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The final rule comes nearly 18 months after the proposed rule and more than four years after the CFPB first released an initial outline of debt collection proposals. The final rule…