Largest Payday Lender in Canada Agrees to Compensation Package

Mon, 15 Jun 2009

The largest payday lender in Canada has agreed to pay $100 million to its clients in Ontario who are disgruntled at being exploited by exorbitant interest rates . Money Mart faced a class-action lawsuit in 2003 on behalf of 264,000 borrowers, with a subsequent investigation revealing that payday loans were accompanied by an interest rate of between 390 and 891 per cent typically.

CEO of Dollar Financial Corp, Money Mart’s parent company, Jeff Weiss, said, ‘While we admit no wrongdoing, this settlement will allow us to avoid the continuing substantial litigation expense that would be expected.’

The class action had sought $224 million plus interest, on the grounds that the company had charged illegal interest rates on 4.5 million short-term loans between 1997 and 2007. The proposed settlement, once approved by court, will see an average payout $380 per person, including $27.5 million in cash, $43 million in forgiven debt and $30 million in credit .

One couple ran into trouble with payday loans when the husband was laid off as a factory worker. The couple had five payday loans at the time, leaving them with weekly interest repayments of between $300 and $400.
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.