California Payday Loan Industry Statistics

Payday Loan Key Financial Statistics

The California Department of Business Oversight posted their annual report on the payday loan industry.

California Department of Business Oversight Annual Report: Operation of Deferred Deposit (Payday Loan) Originators Licensed under the California Deferred Deposit Transaction Law. (We include a link to their report at the bottom of this Post.)

The California Deferred Deposit Transaction Law (Payday Loan) (CDDTL), which became effective on January 1, 2003, shifted responsibility for licensing and regulating persons engaged in the business of deferred deposit transactions from the Department of Justice to what is now the Department of Business Oversight (DBO).

Pursuant to statute, the DBO annually publishes a report containing unaudited information provided by persons and companies licensed by the DBO to conduct deferred deposit transactions in California: Payday Loan Industry Statistics

In a deferred deposit transaction, commonly known as a payday loan, the consumer provides the originator a personal check for the amount of money they want. The originator provides the consumer the money, minus an agreed upon fee. The fee cannot exceed 15 percent of the amount the consumer receives from the originator. The originator then defers depositing the consumer’s check for a specific period of time, which cannot exceed 31 days. The maximum amount a consumer can receive is $300.

Data reported by the licensees for 2014 indicates the average dollar amount of deferred deposit transactions made was $235, and the average length of a transaction was 16 days. As of Dec. 31, 2014, the DBO regulated 2,014 licensed deferred deposit transaction locations. The licensees made 12,407,422 transactions with 1.8 million individual customers for a total dollar amount of roughly $3.38 billion. While the volume of payday lending has remained fairly consistent in California, the number of licensed locations has declined by about 19 percent since 2006.

Key California payday loan industry findings:

Payday loan store count in California: This table shows there has been a steady decline in the number of deferred deposit transaction (payday loan) licenses. From 2006 to 2014, the number of payday loan licensees dropped by 479, or 19.2 percent.

This table reflects the total dollar amount and total number of deferred deposit transactions made from 2006 through 2014. In 2014, the total dollar amount of transactions increased by 6.66 percent from the previous year, and the total number of transactions increased by 2.0 percent. The table also reflects a 2.19 percent increase from 2013 in the number of deferred deposit transaction customers. The average number of transactions per individual customer declined from 7.01 in 2006 to 6.82 in 2014.

Payday Loan Industry Statistics for average California payday loan dollar amount in 2014 fell by 9.6 percent from 2013, to $235. That is the lowest payday loan average since the DBO started to collect full-year data in 2006. The average annual percentage rate of deferred deposit transaction fees (payday loans) also declined substantially in 2014 compared to the prior year, by 11.5 percent to 361 percent. That also was the lowest figure since 2006.

Payday Loan Industry Statistics:

Link to California Department of Business Oversight: (Calif. Payday Loan Report).