Home and Lender

Even though the pattern of a banking institution and its non-bank credit counterparts can take many shapes, the characteristic relation is that the non-banking lender identifies credit facilities for the banking institution, which then receives the credit and either immediately pays off the credit to its non-banking counterparty or another third part. Through partnership with banking institutions, non-bank providers of credit are able to prevent certain regulative and license restrictions in countries where their banking counterparts work.

Conversely, they can use their relations with non-bank credit counterparties to create lead for extra credit. Julie Meade, Colorado's Uniform Consumer Credit Code ("UCCC") administrative officer, lodged two essentially similar appeals against Marlette Funding, LLC, and Avant of Colorado, LLC, with the Colorado State Courts in January 2017.

They claimed UCCC breaches alleging theories that Marlette and Avant were the "true lenders", not their banking counterparts, in a range of credit lines granted to Colorado consumer whose credit interest rate surpassed Colorado's usurious law. Marlette's allegation is that she used her connection to the Cross River Banks of New Jersey to undermine the law of Colorado Usurious by granting credit to Colorado consumer.

According to the complainant, it was acting as a'true lender' by, inter alia, (i) selecting which borrowers obtained credits; (ii) raising the funds used to finance the credits; and (iii) incurring all expenses, i. e. market and regulatory expenses, related to the granting of the credits by Cross River Bank;

iv ) bought the Cross River Banks advances within two working days of their grant; v) Cross River Banks had no liabilities to Marlette from the advances that had been divested; and vi) Marlette was obligated to release Cross River Banks from any claims that the Company's credit facility identified as unlawful. Similarly, the complainant claims against Avant that it, not its Utah-based banking affiliate WebBank, was the "true lender" in the credit operations in question.

Supports this allegation, the allegation claims that (i) Avant was liable for all charges and expenditures, which included the cost of assessing credit claims; (ii) WebBank had no exposure to losses if any of the advances were in default; (iii) Avant was liable for the development and implementation of a Bank Secrecy Act and a Truth in Leasing Act directive in connection with the credit programme; and (iv) WebBank resold the advances to Avant soon after they arose.

Mr. Avant took the case to the Colorado County Supreme Courts, whose dismissal was contested by the UCCC administrator. The Regional Tribunal adopted the judge's recommendations to refer the case to the Regional Tribunal on 1 March 2018. UCCC Administrator's claim under the Deposit Guarantee Act is not fully excluded as the claim was not filed against a Landesbank and WebBank was not a defendant.

Even though the county tribunal found that there was no privilege to hold the case before the county tribunal, the county tribunal declared that Avant may still have a pre-emption defence before the state tribunal on the state legal claim if it can demonstrate that WebBank was indeed the "true lender".

" This case is now before the Colorado State Tribunal. Also in October 2017, NGO Boston, LLC and its shareholder Alice Indelicato brought a suit against Celtic and its non-banking affiliate Cabbage, Inc. in Massachusetts Supreme for alleged breaches of Massachusetts law on extortion. In particular, the complainant claims that Cabbage and Celtic Bank's loan programme was a fraudulent company intended to escape the usurious crime legislation by trying to present Celtic as the " real lender " when the " real lender " was indeed Cabbage.

In addition, the complainant claims that Cabbage was the'true lender' because it manufactures the credits, subscribes, finances and bears all the risks of losses on the credits, and the credits are immediately attributable to Cabbage as soon as they are created. Claimants are arguing that the credits are null and void because they claim interest in addition to what is allowed under Massachusetts' penal law.

All of the "true lender" claims described above are expressly or impliedly based on CashCall, Inc. v. Morrisey, No. 12-1274, 2014 WL 2404300 (W. Va. May 30, 2014), and Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC, 787 F.3. 246 (2d Cir. 2015), for arguing that non-bank creditors are the " real creditors " and are not authorised to use the Bank's Bundes Interest Rates Exporter Agency to bypass state extortionates.

At Madden, Non-Bank Midland Funding, LLC, bought a consumer's defaulting debit balance from a Delaware-based central bank. As a result, Non-Bank Midland Funding, LLC, was able to purchase the loan from a Delaware-based central bank. 4.5 billion euros of this amount were used to repay the loan. New York consumers questioned Midland's capacity to recover debts by claiming that Midland should not be able to depend on "federal exports" to bypass state extortion legislation because it was neither the initial lender nor a local banking institution.

In agreement with the consumers, the Second Court of Appeal found that the pre-emptive right under the state usufruct legislation under the National Banking Act did not apply to non-banks. The present ruling challenges the'valid-when-made' jurisprudence, which in the past has assumed that the determining whether a liability is enforceable in the capable hands of a succeeding buyer is done on the basis of the conditions prevailing at the time it arose (i.e. the initial lender's right, not the succeeding buyer's right).

CashCall, Madden and other related operations are threatening the banking twinning scheme on which the finance sector depends to grant, buy, dispose and carry mortgages. Insecurity in these cases increases with the growth of Finnish firms, which strongly, if not entirely, depend on the existence of their banking partners.

Lots of banking and non-banking institutions have begun to change their businesses and even withdraw from emerging economies like Colorado for afraid to be the next accused in the crosshairs of the UCCC administrator. Currently, there is at least one bill floating in the House and Senate that, if overstepped, would address both the "true lender" issue as well as the implications of the Madden ruling.

H.R. 3354 (or the "Madden" Draft Law) would modify the Home Ownership Credit Act, the Federal Credit Cooperative Act and the Deposit Protection Act, which require their relevant banks to have an interest export agency, so that a credit granted at a prevailing interest rates would remain effective in relation to that interest rates if the credit is thereafter assigned to a third person and could be enforceable by that third person even if the interest rates were not allowed under national legislation.

Therefore, banking and non-banking institutions that establish relations to ease credit programmes must be conscious of the risk to these programmes. This risk varies according to the legal means available to users or regulatory authorities if they discover a breach of governmental usurpation legislation or other legislation to protect users.

In the Kabbage case, for example, which relies on appeals under the Massachusetts Usufruct Act, claimants seek an order that the basic credits are null and void. However, the Commission has not yet ruled on the matter. The UCCC administrator does not request that the Avant and Mallette cases put aside the whole amount of the credit, but calls on the UCCC Tribunal to waive any excessive interest rates found to be in violation of Colorado's usurious laws and to grant the consumer a civilian fine equal to the higher of the total cost of financing or tenfold the amount of the excessive fee.

In view of the inherent nature of the credit exposure, banking and non-banking creditors should assess extortion and other pertinent legislation on credit privacy in the countries in which they provide credit in order to better assess the possible exposure to legal or compliance issues. You should also assess your credit programmes to make sure that the non-bank participants do not monitor and finance most of the programme and that the institution has a downside exposure to the lending.

However, non-bank loan programmes that depend on banking partnership to take advantage of the Bank's interest rate export agency are not without inherent perils. Nevertheless, credit programme assessment and modifications can mitigate those exposures to make sure that the "true lender" is the institution and not the non-banker.