Research: Abusive Credit Card Lenders Lose Money

It may help a bank's bottom line to be nice to their credit card customers

Credit card lenders that use unfair or deceptive practices aren't just hurting consumers. They're also hurting themselves.

That's the underlying message of a recent report by the Center for Responsible Lending that finds onerous policies have unintended consequences. The study found that high-cost penalty fees and interest rates were not used to mitigate risk - as credit card issuers claimed - but instead were the risk that led to higher default rates.

Banks with more consumer-friendly policies in place had lower default rates. The researchers attribute that to the fact that customers aren't getting hit with as many expensive fees.

In fact, the study found that bad practices are a better predictor of consumer complaints and an issuer's losses during a downturn than an institution's type, size or location.

Safeguards

Consumer safeguards on credit cards enhance banks' financial health, contrary to issuers' past claim that safeguards undermine it, the research found. Credit card issuers with higher loss rates before the recession did not on average have a bigger jump in losses during the recession, indicating that having more high-risk customers did not predict which company's problems would grow fastest.

New credit card rules have curbed or ended many of the unfair practices the study examined, such as doubling interest rates on existing balances for being a day late in making a payment. But some persist, and none of the new rules apply to business credit cards. The authors suggest regulators need to better police those areas.

"CRL thinks the report's findings apply equally to high-cost fees and interest rates banks charge for overdraft and payday loans," the consumer group said in its report. "These charges - like their predatory cousins in credit card lending - don't reflect a borrower's risk of default, but are the risk that too often pushes a customer into financial hardship or default."

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