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Antonio Weiss, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, called Thursday for greater transparency in the pricing of online small-business loans.
October 29 -
The regulatory path may also be bumpier for P-to-P lenders that focus on subprime borrowers, predicts Raj Date, a former second-in-command at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
June 22 -
Because of a regulatory quirk, Lending Club and its competitors depend on banks to issue their loans. The set-up raises questions about the regulatory outlook for the fast-growing marketplace lending sector.
December 18
California officials have opened a broad inquiry into the marketplace lending business, seeking data from industry participants that will be used to assess the effectiveness of the state's current regulatory regime.
As part of the inquiry, the state is asking 14 firms to provide five years of data about their businesses, including information about their loan volume, annual percentage rates, delinquent loans and investor bases. The responses are due by March 9.
"These online lenders are filling a need in today's economy, and we have no desire to squelch the industry or innovation," Jan Lynn Owen, commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight, said Friday in a press release. "We have a duty, however, to protect California consumers and businesses, and they have more and more at stake as this industry grows."
The department's press release did not identify the firms that received the survey but said that the companies offer both personal loans and small-business loans. Many of the largest participants in the technology-focused marketplace lending sector are based in California, including Lending Club, Social Finance and Prosper Marketplace.
Friday's announcement follows reports that Prosper provided a $28,500 loan to one of the shooters in last week's terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.,
State officials did not identify any particular regulatory issues that are on their radar, but they did say that the data they gather will be used to assess how well the state's existing regulatory structure, which predates the advent of marketplace lending, is working.
One issue that could arise as part of the inquiry involves state licensing.
Some marketplace lenders have gotten licenses in each state where they make loans, but others, including both Lending Club and Prosper, have taken a different route. Those firms instead partner with banks that originate their loans, a setup that has allowed the firms to avoid state-level interest rate caps.
The California Department of Business Oversight licenses and regulates state-chartered banks and credit unions, as well as nonbank lenders and other financial firms.
California is the first state to launch an inquiry into the fast-growing marketplace lending business. At the federal level, the Treasury Department recently conducted a similar effort aimed at gathering more information about the industry.
