ARLINGTON, Va. (September 1, 2022)—In response to a Better Business Bureau Report issued today entitled “Payday Loan Scams and Predatory Lending,” Online Lenders Alliance Executive Director Andrew Duke issued the following statement:
“One of the Online Lenders Alliance’s core goals and activities is to police the internet to identify fraudsters, report them to the appropriate authorities, and protect consumers by ensuring that the companies they choose for their short-term lending needs are committed to the highest standards of conduct and fully compliant with applicable laws. On this point, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) is right to shine a light on scammers and how they operate.
“But overall, this so-called report reads like a summer intern project gone bad as it repeatedly veers away from the topic of illicit fraudsters to sloppily advocating a policy agenda targeted at legitimate lenders who provide access to credit for millions of Americans while adhering to a strict set of federal and state laws. The lack of fact-checking and the prevalence of misinformation in this document is a disservice to the consumers that the BBB claims to serve.”
Online Lenders Alliance Policing Efforts: Consumer Hotline and Web Monitoring
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- The OLA Consumer Hotline provides a resource for consumers to speak to live operators for help and to report fraud. The Hotline helps consumers by allowing them to hear a reassuring voice, tell their stories, and resolve simple issues quickly.
- This year alone, we fielded nearly 2,000 calls through our 24/7 consumer hotline. While the vast majority of callers were seeking help on finding loans, we fielded 135 fraud complaints—which we work with the consumer and relevant government and non- government entities to address.
- From 2016 to 2021, over 1.35 million URLs have been policed via OLA web monitoring, with thousands of suspected fraudsters flagged and resolved through OLA enforcement actions.
