Tag: Center for Responsible Lending

A bipartisan group of legislators is backing a bill to give Colorado consumers more protection from unsavory debt collection tactics. The bill would extend for...

As Colorado lawmakers wrangle over whether or not to regulate "payday loans" in the state, national mainstream banks are increasingly offering similar products-- short-term, high-interest loans secured by a pending paycheck. That's a bad thing, according to a consumer group that called on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to stop the practice.

The payday loan industry gouges Coloradans like it does Americans across the country, targeting mostly low-income single women, including military spouses. Denver Democratic state Rep. Mark Ferrandino tried and failed to introduce legislation in 2008 that would have curbed the worst of the abuses, where desperate borrowers take loans at hundreds of percent interest and enter a debt cycle they rarely are able to exit. Ferrandino may try it again this year.

WASHINGTON-- As states from New Mexico to Illinois passed payday loan reform laws over the past few years, the movement to curb customer-gouging short-term high-interest loans seemed to be gaining steam and growing teeth. Ohio and Arizona voters even took to the polls to approve rate caps on payday lenders, regardless of threats that the industry would fold if it had to reduce rates from as high as 400 percent to 36 percent or less.