This Lender Said Its Loans Would Help Tennesseans. It Has Sued More Than 110,000 of Them.
by Adam Friedman, Tennessee Lookout This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Tennessee Lookout. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. We are continuing to report on flex loans. Have you been sued by Advance Financial, Harpeth Financial or another flex loan lender? To share your experience, call or text reporter Adam Friedman at 615-249-8509. Rosita Hansen was working an evening shift at a tubing factory in 2023 when a sheriffs deputy showed up and handed her a court summons. She was being sued for failing to pay off a loan of $2,050. What confused Hansen was she had already paid a couple thousand more than she borrowed. But now the company, Advance Financial, said she owed more. Between what shed already paid the company and the lawsuit, Advance stood to receive over $12,500 from Hansen, records show.Hansen, 57, had taken out the loan in 2021 after her mortgage company threatened to foreclose on her modest three-bedroom house outside Morristown, a small city in East Tennessee. Hansen made enough money to support herself, but after taking in her four grandchildren, she struggled to cover the costs of extra food and school supplies, and she stopped paying her mortgage. Thats when she turned to Advance. I was providing for all of them, Hansen said. Financially, it was rough.Like most borrowers, Hansen could not afford an attorney to handle the suit, but she hoped to work out a payment plan with Advance. When she arrived at the Hamblen County courthouse in Morristown in May 2023, she was directed to a line of half a dozen people waiting to meet with an attorney representing the company. Across Tennessee, Advance has sued over 110,000 people since 2015, significantly more than any other payday lender, making it one of the largest plaintiffs of any Tennessee-based company collecting debt. In Hansens Appalachian county of 66,000, where nearly half the households make less than $50,000, the company has filed one case per every 32 residents over that time, the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica found.Advance began filing thousands of lawsuits soon after Tennessee lawmakers approved the Flex Loan, a product pioneered by Advance in Tennessee. The loans $4,000 cap is nine times higher than the limit for most payday loans, and the company charges the equivalent of a 279.5% annual interest rate. Before Flex Loans became legal in 2015, payday lenders could only lend $425, and the borrower could never be required to pay back more than $500. Since then, those protections have been eliminated and thousands of borrowers have been defaulting. Flex Loans only stop growing when theyre completely paid off, when a flex lender declares the loan is in default or when it sues the borrower. If the loans do end up in court, the law allows lenders to recoup attorneys fees which cant be done with payday loans a practice that can add up to a third of the loan amount. Court judgments against customers are often thousands of dollars, with some exceeding $10,000, records show. About 40% of all cases end up with a wage garnishment, court records show. The consequences of Flex Loans were predicted when the Tennessee legislature legalized them 10 years ago, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wanted to regulate products like Flex Loans when Congress created the agency in 2011. The Trump administrations efforts to dismantle the CFPB are currently being reviewed by the courts. Advance has argued that the new product would help consumers by offering them loans that are technically cheaper than a payday loan. It downplayed concerns from consumer advocates that these high-interest loans targeted and trapped low-income borrowers in debt they could never pay off. The companys leaders made their case just as federal regulators planned to crack down on other Tennessee lenders for making different high-interest loans to people they knew could not pay them back.After just a few years, evidence started mounting that the loans were exacting a high toll on low-income borrowers while generating huge profits for lenders. Since then, the Flex Loan has buried tens of thousands of Tennesseans such as Hansen in a deep financial hole.Gabe Kravitz, a consumer finance researcher at The Pew Charitable Trusts, said loans above $1,000 paired with triple-digit interest rates are hard to pay off. It gets very expensive very quickly, he said. Only a few other states have approved products similar to the Flex Loan but, unlike Tennessee, when other states saw problems with the loans, they acted to rein them in. Virginia allowed banks to make line-of-credit loans but had never seen the need to cap interest rates as banks competed for customers. But soon after Advance showed up, regulators noticed the company filing thousands of lawsuits. The state attorney generals office investigated the company for deceptive practices in 2020, ultimately labeling the company as predatory and helping to pass legislation to shut down Flex Loan-like products in the state. Advance declined to answer a question about the Virginia attorney generals investigation. California and North Dakota also passed bills capping interest rates on open-ended lines of credit after Advance and other companies began to operate in those states. The Lookout and ProPublica sent Advance Financial detailed questions about its operations, including each of the cases cited in the article. Cullen Earnest, the senior vice president of public policy at Advance Financial, declined to answer specific questions and said he could not discuss individual cases due to privacy concerns. Earnest said in an email that the company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. He added that the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions has received just 91 complaints on flexible credit lenders since 2020, representing less than 0.001% of all new flex loan agreements, and that this data reflects the satisfaction of the vast majority of Advances customers.Company records show Hansen made her twice-a-month payments on time, paying over $6,600 in 10 months. The required minimum monthly payments are supposed to act like a safety net, ensuring borrowers pay enough to cover the interest, fees and 3% of the principal. But many times after Hansen made a payment, the company allowed her to immediately borrow the principal back, which she often did, extending the time it would take to pay off the loan. After almost a year of payments, she still owed more than $3,000. One Borrower Owed Over $8,000 in Interest and Court Fees Sources: Rosita Hansens loan billing statements and court records. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica) Hansen said she knew the loan was costly every loan statement warns, This is an expensive form of credit. Only borrow what you can afford to pay back but she didnt realize how hard it would be to keep up with the interest and fees. The loan from Advance only made Hansens financial situation worse. As the payments became too much to handle, she lost the house. But the Flex Loan continued to grow, almost doubling in size by the time she received a court summons a year later. Who Is Advance?Michael and Tina Hodges started their payday lending business in the 1990s with a few stores in Nashville. The company, then called Advance Pay Day, steadily expanded, making payday loans and offering products like bus passes, check cashing and money transfers. In 2009, the Hodges told a local news outlet that they wanted to shed the image of a simple payday advance company, so the company took on a new name, Advance Financial. By 2010, Advance had generated a modest $15 million in revenue from about two dozen stores, according to statements it made in news reports at the time.Not long after, the growing business collided with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal regulator Congress created after the banking crisis. The CFPB had started to take aim at high-interest payday lenders, releasing a 2013 report on the dangers of the loans as debt traps. A subsequent agency report found that payday lenders, particularly in Tennessee, relied heavily on offering loans to those who couldnt afford them. Advance declined to respond to a question about the CFPB report. Advance Financial lobbied Tennessee lawmakers to approve bigger loans that accumulate higher fees, saying the new offering would be a little bit more expensive but arguing it would be good for consumers. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) Looking for an alternative product that wouldnt fall under the CFPBs looming regulations, Advance turned to Tennessee lawmakers, who have power over statewide interest rates. The company hired Earnest, the former top aide for the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, which regulates payday lenders. It also opened up a political action committee and began to push lawmakers to allow it to create the Flex Loan. In a hearing discussing the Flex Loan legislation before its passage, Earnest told a Tennessee Senate committee the new loan was like a line of credit you could get at a bank, acknowledging it would be a little bit more expensive.But the proposal added significant potential costs. To allow lenders to circumvent the states interest rate cap, the legislature simply called the interest something else: a customary fee. The law would permit flex lenders to charge 24% interest plus a daily fee until the loan is paid off. The fee is calculated by multiplying the loan amount by 0.7%. Over 365 days the fee adds 255.5% to the cost of the loan. Advances own documentation tells borrowers that although the state and Advance call it a fee, the federal government sees it for what it is, an interest rate. The bill passed the state Senate without opposition. In the House, only Democratic state Rep. Mike Stewart spoke against the bill, which passed overwhelmingly and was later signed by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.Stewart pointed out the new law allowed companies to recoup attorneys fees in court, something payday lenders had not been allowed to do, and a practice he knew as a lawyer would likely increase the number of lawsuits. The legislation was structured to maximize the amount of money they could extract from these debtors, Stewart, who has since left the legislature, said in an interview. After legalization of the Flex Loan, Advance Financials business boomed. The company expanded to all corners of Tennessee, growing to 105 locations by the end of the 2010s. As a private company, Advance is not required to release financial information. But Advance and the Hodges were vocal about their success, at least at first. The company self-reported to the Nashville Business Journal in 2019 that it made $392 million, quintupling its revenue from the year before it started offering the Flex Loan, and making more than 25 times as much as it had at the start of the decade. Advances revenue no longer appeared on any of the business journals lists after 2019. Those numbers parallel the growth of the flex loan industry in Tennessee. By 2019, all flex lenders across the state had generated about $730 million in operating income, a number that has continued to grow, according to state records. In 2022, the latest available year of data, flex lenders earned $880 million in operating income. The company is one of the top campaign donors to Tennessee politicians, having spent roughly $2.5 million since 2014. Advance has also spent over $3 million lobbying state lawmakers over the past decade. The Hodges have also made roughly $10 million in political donations to federal candidates since 2014, including over $3 million to support President Donald Trumps campaigns. In a 2019 recording obtained by The Washington Post, Hodges told a payday lending industry group his political donations granted him better access to Trump. Hodges told the Post he was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump and never used his status to ask the Trump administration for help.A Trump-appointed CFPB director rescinded most of the payday lending regulations in 2020. The new Trump administration has tried to gut the CFPB, but an appeals court on April 28 upheld a lower court ruling preventing the acting CFPB director from firing about 90% of the departments employees.Today, Advances only product is the Flex Loan.A Wave of LawsuitsBefore the Flex Loan, court records show that payday lenders like Advance rarely took borrowers to court. The low $500 cap on loan amounts and the prohibition on collecting attorneys fees often made suing people unprofitable. The Flex Loan law changed all that, unleashing a wave of lawsuits. Across the 59 counties where electronic court records are available home to over four-fifths of the states roughly 7 million people Advance has brought one lawsuit for every 50 residents since 2015, according to a data analysis by the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica. For Tonya Davis, a single mother who works at a local hospital, Advance waited six years to sue. Tennessees debt collection law allows lenders to file a suit within six years and, if the company wins a judgment in court, to pursue the debt for another decade. Davis lives in Davidson County, where Advance operates more stores than in any other county in Tennessee. Advance has filed over 22,000 lawsuits in Davidson over the decade since it began offering Flex Loans, its highest county total. Its stores in Nashville, which is located in that county, are generally in neighborhoods where households have lower incomes. Davis said Advance contacted her in 2018, claiming she owed money on a Flex Loan taken out the previous year. Davis said she never borrowed the money and was the victim of identity theft, a claim the company told her it would look into after she told Advance in a phone call that the Social Security number on the account wasnt hers.The company never reached back out to her, she said, and for years, she heard nothing from Advance, but in 2024, she received a summons declaring it was suing her for almost $4,800. Tonya Davis says she never borrowed money from Advance and was a victim of identity theft. The company told her it would look into the matter and then, almost six years later, sued her for $4,785. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) At the time Davis was caring for her dying mother and missed her court hearing. Because she didnt appear, Advance won a default judgment against her for the full amount. Davis could not afford an attorney, so she filed an appeal on her own, but she never got a chance to challenge the judgment. Soon after the hearing began, attorneys for Advance noted that Davis had filed her appeal one day past the filing deadline and the judge denied her appeal. The companys default judgment means Davis is required to pay Advance $175 a month.Im not a lawyer, Davis said in an interview. Im trying to do the best I can with what I have. I dont know anything about this, or I would have paid, but they didnt even give me the opportunity to present my information.Challenging Advance in court can be daunting. When Advance goes to court for a Flex Loan, it wins a majority of the time, in part because borrowers often fail to show up and in part because the company has more legal resources. The company has won over $200 million in judgments since the start of 2015. Mandy Spears, the deputy director of the Tennessee-based think tank The Sycamore Institute, said in court that lenders have all the advantages because they have lawyers with vast experience in the system. Its just complicated for the average person versus a more sophisticated business or law firm, she said. Its really a gap in knowledge and expertise. Many defendants dont realize that when they fail to appear in court, the company doesnt have to provide detailed documents proving what a borrower owes. Tessa Shearon, a 27-year-old mother in McMinnville, thought she paid off her loan with Advance Financial in 2020. When the company sued her almost three years later, she missed her court hearing because she was eight months pregnant and on bed rest. A judge ruled her in default and Advance won a judgment for $4,700. Tessa Shearon thought she paid off her loan with Advance in 2020. The company sued her three years later. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) Shearon didnt keep any documentation after paying off her loan, but she said she reached out to Advances lawyer to dispute the lawsuit. The company has not sought to garnish her wages. But she remains in limbo: Under the law, the company can choose to file a wage garnishment any time in the next 10 years to recover the judgment amount. My only worry is them attempting to collect, Shearon said. I dont have anything.Marla Williams, a consumer law attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee, is one of a handful of lawyers whove helped defend borrowers against Advance.In several cases, Williams has been able to block wage garnishments and reduce the customary fee the company charges. Marla Williams is a lawyer who has helped defend borrowers against Advance. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica) Williams said that in a 2024 case, she was able to lower the payments from an unaffordable several hundred dollars a month to around $50 per month, which her client could afford. Advance fought the reduction, but a judge ruled in her favor. In another case, Williams said Advance tried to charge a borrower thousands of dollars in additional fees months after he stopped paying the loan. After a hearing, which most borrowers without lawyers dont ask for, a judge reduced the fees, calling the added charges unconscionable and unjust, court records show. Williams said the company often uses aggressive tactics in court, something that shes observed over the past decade. This is their business model, she said.Advance declined to discuss its business model or legal strategy.Sometimes Advance has already made money off the borrower before suing them, as in the case of Hansen. Over 10 months, Hansen paid Advance nearly $2,200 more than she borrowed, records show.She still owed almost $3,000 when she stopped paying Advance. The company waited around three months before declaring her in default, letting her debt grow before it sued her several months later. With the addition of attorneys fees and court-added interest, the company sued her for $6,000. Hansen, who asked to use her maiden name because shes no longer married, lost her home in 2022, moving into an apartment, which she said costs more than her mortgage had.Hansen said she plans to pay Advance by the summer. A February bonus check, which the company garnished 25% of, has helped. I understand its every person for themselves, and theyre out to make a buck, Hansen said about Advance. But you know what, people out there are struggling every single day, and thats what they take advantage of. How We Tracked Advance Financials LawsuitsFor this story, the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica used online portals to find civil cases in Tennessee General Sessions Courts for the 59 counties where electronic court records are available. More than four-fifths of the states population lives in these counties. Our analysis included cases filed and uploaded to the online portals from 2009 through 2024. We filtered the data for cases brought by payday lenders in Tennessee, using company names, and found that Advance was filing significantly more suits than any other payday lender, according to court records. Advance Financial often uses a related company called Harpeth Financial Services to file lawsuits against borrowers. Not every case listed the type of loan behind the lawsuit, but a pattern emerged: After Advance started offering Flex Loans in 2015, the number of lawsuits it filed significantly increased.Of the cases in our data that were filed by Advance, over half had a judgment amount awarded, indicating the company won its lawsuit. About three-quarters of the cases filed had information on whether a wage garnishment was or wasnt filed against a borrower. Our analysis found that among cases where that information was available, 40% included wage garnishment. Have you taken out a flex loan and struggled to pay it back? Have you been sued by Advance Financial, Harpeth Financial or another flex loan lender?Reporters at the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica want to hear from you as they investigate flex loan lenders, who have sued more than 100,000 Tennesseans.To share your experience, call or text reporter Adam Friedman at 615-249-8509. Mollie Simon contributed research and Joel Jacobs contributed data reporting.
