Tag Archives: overdraft

Performance-Based Consumer Law

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Lauren Willis has posted Performance-Based Consumer Law to SSRN. This article

makes the case for recognizing performance-based regulation as a distinct tool in the consumer-law regulatory toolbox and for employing this tool broadly. Performance-based consumer law has the potential to incentivize firms to educate rather than obfuscate, develop simple and intuitive product designs that align with rather than defy consumer expectations, and channel consumers to products that are suitable for the consumers’ circumstances. Moreover, the process of establishing performance standards would sharpen our understanding of our goals for consumer law, and the process of testing for compliance with those standards would produce data about how to meet those goals in a continually evolving marketplace. Even if performance-based regulation does not directly lead to dramatic gains in consumer comprehension or marked declines in unsuitable uses of consumer products, the process of establishing and implementing such regulation promises dividends for improving traditional forms of regulation. (1)
This seems like a pretty radical change from our current approaches to the regulation of consumer financial transactions. Willis argues that disclosure does not work (no argument there) and industry can easily circumvent bright line rules (no argument there). She claims that a suitability regime, like ones that exist in the brokerage industry, offer a superior alternatives.  She writes,
Suitability standards would be closer to traditional substantive regulation, but more flexible. Regulation might define suitable (or unsuitable) uses of types or features of products, or firms might define suitable uses of their products, provided that they did so publicly. Although suitability might be required of every transaction, testing every transaction for suitably would often be prohibitively expensive and ad hoc ex post enforcement would create only limited incentives for firm compliance. Better to set performance benchmarks for what proportion of the firm’s customers must use the products or features suitably (or not unsuitably) and use field-based testing of a sample of the firm’s customers to assess whether the benchmarks are met. Enforcement levers could include, e.g., fines, rewards, licensing consequences, regulator scrutiny, or unfair, deceptive, or abusive conduct liability. (4)
This is certainly intriguing. But just as certainly, one can see the consumer finance industry raising concerns about a lack of clear rules to guide their actions and the after-the-fact evaluations that this approach would subject them to. Willis is too quick to reject such concerns, but they are legitimate ones that would need to be addressed if performance-based consumer law was to be widely adopted. Nonetheless, this is an intriguing paper and its implications should be further explored.

Reiss on High Loan Fees

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CRM Buyer quoted me in On-Premises Banks Stick It to Walmart Customers. It opens,

Walmart customers who use the banking services provided inside the chain’s stores are among the highest payers of fees — especially overdraft fees — in the U.S., a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal filings concluded.

The five banks with the most Walmart branches ranked among the top 10 U.S. banks in fee income as a percentage of deposits last year, the paper reported, compared to other U.S. banks that earn most of their income through lending.

It is a notable finding, especially given Walmart’s brand: First and foremost, the company has built a reputation for providing low-cost products at significant savings compared to other stores.

Walmart cannot be held completely responsible for the banks’ practices, of course. The financial sector is highly regulated, and no third-party retailer is in a position to set standards or make policies.

However, Walmart told the Journal that it has a thorough process for vetting banks to make sure they are in line with its philosophy.

Financial Reform? What Financial Reform?

Apart from the Walmart branding issue, the report highlights some other concerns. In spite of curbs on financial industry practices in the last few years, it still is possible for providers to levy high fees on consumers in the lowest economic brackets, making it more difficult for them to work their way out of debt. A new government agency, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, was established to curtail such activities. Why do they still occur?

The Wall Street Journal leads off its article with the story of a consumer who knowingly overdraws her checking account to pay for a needed car repair. The US$30 fee, which translated into an APR of more than 300 percent, was actually cheaper than a payday loan, the borrower said.

In the bank’s defense, there are certain financial, market, regulatory and business realities that cannot be ignored.

“While I am not going to defend high-cost fees for financial products, I would say that the lenders often have high fixed costs for each transaction that can work out to a higher percentage of the amount borrowed than they would be for larger transactions,” David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, told CRM Buyer.

“So, I would say that there is some gouging going on in this market, but also some basic business reality,” he remarked.