Question

You are the in-house counsel for a small bank (the “Bank”) located in Northwest Colorado. The Bank has three locations: Steamboat Springs, Hayden and Craig. The Bank offers a broad range of banking services, such as making personal and commercial loans and offering various types of savings and checking accounts. The vast majority of the Bank’s customers live in Routt, Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties. The Bank has a reputation as being a friendly, small town bank that knows its customers by name. The Bank sponsors and helps organize many local community activities. The Bank is a publicly traded company. During the past several years, the price of the Bank’s stock has fallen at alarming rates. This is mainly due to decreased profits. Many of the Bank’s customers work for the coal, oil and gas industries, and with recent regulations and falling energy prices, many have lost their jobs and cannot afford to use the Bank’s services to buy cars, real estate or start businesses that require loans. Shareholders are losing faith in the Bank, and because of the mass of selling of its stock, its price has fallen by 50% in the past three years. Major shareholders are demanding that the Bank take initiative immediately to generate more revenue. The CEO of the Bank wants your advice on whether the Bank should get into the business of subprime lending. That is, relax its own lending standards to allow customers with poor credit to obtain a loan by putting as little as 3% down. Currently, the Bank requires a down payment of at least 15%, and only lends to customers with good or great credit scores. The CEO thinks that subprime lending will immediately generate additional revenue without adding to the Bank’s risk. Once the Bank makes the loan, it will sell the promissory note and deed of trust or security agreement to another financial institution for less than the total repayment amount, but more than the original amount. For example, if the Bank lends its customer $200,000 to buy a house, and the total repayment owed including interest is $350,000, the Bank could sell the debt for $250,000 and make a $50,000 profit in a short period of time. The customer would then make payments to the company that bought the debt from the Bank. The CEO says that the practice of relaxing its lending standards will allow local residents who are short on money to obtain loans to buy homes or start businesses. Please write a memorandum to the CEO counseling her on whether the Bank should, in your opinion, relax its lending standards and get into the business of subprime lending. Make sure to support your opinion with evidence such as laws that apply, historical examples, etcetera. You may use the information you learned in class, but you will also have to conduct your own research via the internet. As the attorney for Bank, you may provide both legal advice and practical advice.

Factors you should discuss include: What, if any, legal implications are there? (For example, are subprime loans allowed? Are there any laws that govern subprime loans?) What, if any, financial implications are there? (What are the possible good and bad things that could happen to the finances of the customers, the Bank, the Bank’s shareholders, and the economy in general?) What, if any, ethical implications are there? (For example, should the Bank be responsible for the higher risk that the customers will not be able to repay the loan? How should the Bank balance its own interest in making a profit versus protecting customers from risky loans?) Are there any other issues you think the CEO should know about before making a decision? If the Bank starts offering subprime loans, what precautions should it take in order to minimize the risks you think are greatest?

Answer 1

A subprime loan is a type of loan offered at a rate above prime to individuals who do not qualify for prime-rate loans. Quite often subprime borrowers have been turned down by traditional lenders because of their low credit ratings or other factors that suggest they have a reasonable chance of defaulting on the debt repayment.

The higher interest rates on subprime loans can translate into tens of thousands of dollars in additional interest payments over the life of a mortgage.

On large term loans, such as mortgages, the additional percentage points of interest often translate to tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of extra interest payments over the life of the loan. This can make paying off subprime loans difficult for low-income borrowers, as it did in the late 2000s. In 2007 high numbers of borrowers holding subprime mortgages began to default. Ultimately, this subprime meltdown was a significant contributor to the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession. As a result, a number of big banks got out of the subprime lending business. More recently, though, this has started to change.

Taking all these into consideration, the CEO should take the decision.