A group of 21 state attorneys general have sent a letter to the Senate majority and minority leaders as well as to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee urging them to reject H.R. 3299 (“Protecting Consumers’ Access to Credit Act of 2017”) and H.R. 4439 (“Modernizing Credit Opportunities Act”).

H.R. 3299, known as the “Madden fix” bill, was passed by the House in February 2018.  It attempts to address the uncertainty created by the Second Circuit’s decision in Madden v. Midland Funding.  In that decision, the Second Circuit held that a nonbank that purchases loans from a national bank could not charge the same rate of interest on the loan that Section 85 of the National Bank Act (NBA) allows the national bank to charge.  The bill would amend Section 85, as well as the provisions in the Home Owners’ Loan Act (HOLA), the Federal Credit Union Act, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDIA) that provide rate exportation authority to, respectively, federal savings associations, federal credit unions, and state-chartered banks, to provide that a loan that is made at a valid interest rate remains valid with respect to such rate when the loan is subsequently transferred to a third party and can be enforced by such third party even if the rate would not be permitted under state law.

H.R. 4439 was referred to the House Financial Services Committee in November 2017.  It is intended to address a second source of uncertainty for some loans that are made by banks with substantial origination, marketing and/or servicing assistance from nonbank third parties and then sold shortly after origination.  These loans have been challenged by regulators and others on the theory that the nonbank agent is the “true lender,” and therefore the loan is subject to state licensing and usury laws.

The bill would amend the Bank Service Company Act to add language providing that the geographic location of a service provider for an insured depository institution “or the existence of an economic relationship between an insured depository institution and another person shall not affect the determination of the location of such institution under other applicable law.”  The bill would amend the HOLA to add similar language regarding service providers to and persons having economic relationships with federal savings associations.

It would also amend Section 85 of the NBA to add language providing that a loan or other debt is made by a national bank and subject to the bank’s rate exportation authority where the national bank “is the party to which the debt is owed according to the terms of the [loan or other debt], regardless of any later assignment.  The existence of a service or economic relationship between a [national bank] and another person shall not affect the application of [the national bank’s rate exportation authority] to the rate of interest rate upon the [loan, note or other evidence of debt] or the identity of the [national bank] as the lender under the agreement.”  The bill would add similar language to the provisions in the HOLA and FDIA that provide rate exportation authority to, respectively, federal savings associations and state-chartered banks.

The state AGs assert in their letter that the bills “would legitimize the efforts of some non-bank lenders to circumvent state usury law” and “would constitute a substantial expansion of the existing preemption of state usury laws.”  As support for their argument that Congress did not intend to allow nonbank entities to use NBA preemption, they cite to the OCC’s recent bulletin on small dollar lending in which the OCC stated that it “views unfavorably an entity that partners with a bank with the sole goal of evading a lower interest rate established under the law of the entity’s licensing state(s).”

While the context for the OCC’s statement was “specific to short-term, small-dollar installment lending,” we have expressed concern as to its implications for all banks that partner with third parties to make loans under Section 85.  As we noted, the statement also seems at odd with the broad view of federal preemption enunciated by the OCC with respect to the Madden decision.

While the enactment of legislation reaffirming the valid-when-made doctrine and addressing the “true lender” issue would be helpful, we have advocated for the OCC’s adoption of a rule providing that (1) loans funded by a bank in its own name as creditor are fully subject to Section 85 and other provisions of the NBA for their entire term; and (2) emphasizing that banks that make loans are expected to manage and supervise the lending process in accordance with OCC guidance and will be subject to regulatory consequences if and to the extent that loan programs are unsafe or unsound or fail to comply with applicable law.  In other words, it is the origination of the loan by a national bank (and the attendant legal consequences if the loans are improperly originated), and not whether the bank retains the predominant economic interest in the loan, that should govern the regulatory treatment of the loan under federal law.

In two enforcement actions pending in Colorado state court, the Administrator of the Uniform Consumer Credit Code for the State of Colorado is employing the “true lender” theory and the Second Circuit’s Madden decision to challenge two bank-model lending programs.