Lender*VP Forms, a division of CUSO CU*Answers, has been busy preparing for the Military Lending Act (MLA) which goes into effect October 3rd, 2016. The MLA is a regulation initiated by the Department of Defense designed to protect active duty service members from high-interest loans. As part of the Act, active duty military personnel protected under MLA will receive a variety of benefits including interest cap, written and oral disclosures, no roll-over loans, mandatory waivers, and more.

When credit unions are processing loans for protected service members, they will be required to use MLA-compliant documents and disclosures. This means credit unions have been working directly with their forms vendors to determine whether or not they should purchase MLA compliant versions of their existing forms.

What does this mean for the forms department? For the past several months, Lender*VP Forms has been receiving new MLA forms from its top 3 forms providers: CUNA Mutual Group, Securian, and Oak Tree.

Depending on the volume of loans a credit union is currently processing for active duty military personnel, some institutions have opted to have the new forms mapped in CU*BASE®, CU*Answers core processing platform, and others have opted to use fillable PDFs as needed.

Given the scope and scale of this act, other departments are also working on the various moving parts. You can learn more by reviewing Jim Vilker’s update to the Military Lending Act and answers on the Military Lending Act.