Category Archives: Canada

Canada’s payday lenders have it pretty good

Most of Canada’s provinces have capped rates. The lowest cap is $17 per $100. That’s pretty good if you’re a lender. Compared to the US market, Canada is pretty small. According to Wikipedia, Canada has about 35M residents compared to close to 325M for the United States.

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British Columbia new payday rules

The new rules are effective Nov. 1st in British Columbia. Compliance and enforcement will be administered by Consumer Protection BC, a not-for-profit organization that operates at arm’s length from government. Here are the rules in a nutshell: Practices that unreasonably increase the borrower’s debt load, including rollovers that require borrowers to pay significant extra fees […]

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The Cash Store acquires 10 store chain

The Cash Store bought Affordable Payday Loans, a 10 store operation in Ontario and Edmonton for an undisclosed amount. Three of the locations will be consilidated with nearby Cash Store or Instaloans branches. You can read the full article in RTT news.

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Dollar Financial settles class action suit in Canada

Here are the facts: it includes $27.5 million in cash, $43 million in forgiven debt and $30 million in credits – is approved by the court, the average payout will be about $380. Lawyer Harvey Strosberg played it cool in this statement: “We think it’s fair and reasonable and in the best interest of the […]

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A very sticky class action suit

Money Mart and Dollar Financial Corp are being sued for allegedly charging an illegal check cashing fee that violated Canada’s small loan laws. The class action is looking for $185M by 264,000 former borrowers for check-cashing fees and interest plus punitive damages between 1997 and 2007. Vancouver based Money Mart is claiming to only have […]

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A Note on Capping Rates

In Ontario they’re debating about capping rates on payday loans. On the surface this may seem like a good thing, but my opinion is that it disables market forces and will effectively never make price competition a factor. I’ve felt that most regulation is aimed at making payday loan companies less profitable, when they should […]

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Finally, an independant and reputable payday loan report.

This is an older post that’s been updated:“Instead of regulating prices charged on small, short-term loans, the authors argue that increasing competition will drive prices down” says Signe-Mary McKernan and Caroline Ratcliffe. This new report by the Urban Institute finds that if payday advances are eliminated they “could be replaced by alternatives that make families […]

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Canada’s working with lenders

Cananda is systematically placing caps on payday loans. The average cap is around 25%, which in my opinion is pretty reasonable for the lender. Nova Scotia is in the process of setting a cap and British Columbia will probably be next. Manitoba recently set it’s cap at 17%. Apparently, payday lending is a billion dollar […]

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