Five Reasons Why You Should Reconsider Short-Term Loans

For the better part of a decade, regulatory agencies have placed obstacles in front of banks that all but prohibited them from offering short-term, small-dollar lending options for their customers. Now, at least one major regulator has signaled a shift in its opinion about those products, which should inspire banks to reconsider those options.

Here are five reasons banks often cite when discussing why they don’t offer short-term, small-dollar options, and a case why they should rethink those ideas.

You don’t think your customers need it
Perhaps many of your branches are in affluent areas, or you believe that your customers have access to other types of short-term liquidity. But the statistics regarding American personal finances may surprise you:

Nearly 50 percent of American consumers lack the necessary savings to cover a $400 emergency, according to the Federal Reserve.
The personal savings rate dipped to 2.8 percent in April 2018, the lowest rate in over a decade, according to the St. Louis Fed.
Each year 12 million Americans take out payday loans, spending $9 billion on loan fees, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Based on these statistics, it’s likely that a portion of your customer base is affected by the lack of savings, or has a need for better access to liquidity, and chances are good that they’d be receptive to a small-dollar, short-term loan solution.

It’s Cost and Resource Prohibitive
For most financial institutions, introducing a traditional small-dollar loan program is cost-prohibitive–operationally, and from a staffing standpoint. From the cost of loan officers and underwriters to the overhead, the reality is it would take time and resources many banks do not have.

Enter fintech firms, bringing proprietary technology and the application of big data. The right fintech partner can manage the time, human and financial resources you may not have, such as application, underwriting and loan signing processes. In some cases, the whole thing can be automated, resulting in a “self-service” program for your customers, eliminating the human resource need.

Underwriting Challenges and Charge-Off Concerns
Another challenge is the loan approval process and how to underwrite these unique loans. A determination of creditworthiness by a traditional credit check does not adequately predict the consumer’s current ability to repay using recent behavior instead of a period of many years. Today’s fintech firms use proprietary technology to underwrite the loans, incorporating a variety of factors to mitigate charge-offs.

The OCC recently released a bulletin outlining “reasonable policies and practices specific to short-term, small-dollar installment lending.” It stated such policies would generally include “analysis that uses internal and external data sources, including deposit activity, to assess a consumer’s creditworthiness and to effectively manage credit risk.” The right fintech partner will apply big data solutions to assess creditworthiness using the OCC’s criteria and other factors.

Compliance Burdens
There’s no question short-term loan options have been heavily regulated over the past eight years. The CFPB placed predatory lending and payday loans under scrutiny. In 2013, the OCC and FDIC effectively ended banks’ payday loan alternative, the deposit advance. The CFPB cracked down even harder in October 2017 with their final payday lending rule, which had the potential to devastate the storefront payday loan industry, forcing consumers to seek alternative sources of quick liquidity.

The pressure is easing. The OCC was the first agency to encourage banks to make responsible and efficient small-dollar loans. If history has taught us anything, it’s that the other regulatory agencies likely will soon follow suit.

Concern About Cannibalizing Overdraft Revenue
Exclusive data collected by fintech firms experienced with overdraft management has shown there are two distinct groups of consumers managing their liquidity needs in different ways:

The Overdrafters
These are consumers that struggle with transaction timing and incur overdraft or NSF fees. A significant portion of this group might have irregular income streams, such as small business owners or commissioned salespeople. In many cases, these consumers are aware of their heavy overdraft activity, and will continue to overdraft, because for them, it makes financial sense.

The Loan-Seekers
A second group includes those consumers who simply lack the cash to promptly pay their bills, and either can’t obtain adequate overdraft limits or failed to opt-in to overdraft services. These consumers are actively seeking small-dollar loans to avoid the double whammy of hefty late fees and negative hits to their credit score for late payments.

Savvy financial institutions will ensure they have the programs in place to serve both groups of consumers, and fill the gap for the second category by using an automated small-dollar lending program with sound underwriting from a trusted fintech vendor.