Opportun, a California-based consumer lender, announced it’s pulling a bank charter application it filed last year. The company said it would amend elements of its application to “reflect changes to our business.”

Why should we care?
Opportun’s bank charter application faced resistance from consumer groups after a ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation last year and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) probe into the company’s practices. The ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found that Silicon Valley-based Oportun – a subprime installment lender operating in 12 states – charged high interest rates, and filed nearly 10,000 lawsuits against customers in 2020. The company announced changes to its debt-collection practices in July of last year, but consumer groups sounded alarm over its ambitions to become a bank. “While Oportun claims to be a “mission driven financial institution providing inclusive, affordable financial services to Latinos, immigrants, and low-to-moderate borrowers, it has in fact aggressively marketed unaffordable loans to these communities and used abusive and intimidating debt collection tactics,” a December 2020 letter authored by a coalition of consumer groups, including The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC), stated. In August of this year, 22 federal and state consumer advocacy groups wrote to acting Comptroller Michael Hsu, asking the agency to delay any decision on Opportun’s bank charter application until the CFPB completed its investigation.