As we follow the Native American lending industry we have seen more than a few tribal lenders go out of business. Some of the companies simply vanish (like Great Basin Finance) and some others go out of business with a lot of public notice, like Western Sky Financial. A few others have merged or been taken over by other tribal lenders, like Red Mountain Loans being taken over by Black Bear Advance. There are even a few cases where a tribal lender has been converted over to a state licensed lender.
But one thing we have not seen, until now, is a tribal lender that was announced and had a certain degree of press releases and new stories surrounding them, and then they never opened their doors for business. It's not that they were open for a short period of time and then threw in the towel by quickly giving up. We are talking about never having been open at all, even for one day.
This is the situation that took place (or technically did not take place) with Bear Paw Cash. The tribal owners and operators of what was slated to become Bear Paw Cash were ready to offer some very basic short-term loans through this new Native American lender. The team that was putting the majority of financing behind the new company also happened to be the same team financing the wildly popular (and highly profitable) Plain Green Loans.
Since this tribe (and their non-tribal financial partners) were having a great deal of success by issuing installment loans through Plain Green Loans. The thinking was that they would have a second company, side by side with Plain Green Loans, as a the tribal payday lending business for the tribe. Those are the two major schisms in Native American lending, the payday loan operators and the installment loan providers, so it made sense to have a company in each (distinct) business line.
And for some reason (or reasons) that we will probably never know that is the end of the story for Bear Paw Cash. The company had a small amount of press, they were mentioned in a story about Plain Green Loans and Think Finance, the company that was supposed to be providing the majority of the funding for Bear Paw Cash.
The company did have a website, although it was always a dormant and/or under construction page. The firm bothered to do all the correct filing and they were organized as a federally recognized tribal lending company, or to be technical they were a tribal lending entity.
After all the preparations and organizing the company never actually went into business, they didn't issue loans and they did not take applications, they did not have a customer service team and you could not send them an email. The existence of the company stalled just before arrival and never did move ahead.
Why not? Maybe it was money, perhaps the funding from Think Finance never did come through and there were no other 'wholesale' lenders out there willing to fund yet another tribal payday loan company? Or maybe the operators of Plain Green Loans asked themselves why they should create an internally funded tribal loan competitor to their very successful and fast growing Plain Green Loans business?
No matter why the company did not move forward all we do know is that they were getting ready to start their business and they did not, and 2012 went by, as did 2013 and now 2014, and still no Bear Paw Cash. It's safe to say this company is not going to launch. That's the story behind the only tribal loan shop (that we know of) that was all set to open their doors and decided not to bother after all.
It's not a big loss for us as consumers, we still have over 150 tribal loan companies that are excited to do business with us.
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