Senate Bill No. 277

(By Senator Minard and Kessler)


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[Introduced January 21, 2002; referred to the Committee

on Banking and Insurance; and then to the Committee on Finance .]

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A BILL to amend and reenact section one hundred fifteen, article seven, chapter forty-six-a of the code of West Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as amended, relating to registration of persons involved in consumer lending.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That section one hundred fifteen, article seven, chapter forty-six of the code of West Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as amended, be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 7. ADMINISTRATION.

 §46A-7-115. Notification.
(1) Every person engaged in this state in making consumer credit sales or consumer loans, including any person subject to the provisions of section five-a, article twenty-three, chapter eleven of this code, as a result of their consumer lending or any person who regularly purchases retail installment contracts or other consumer paper from a business with which it is affiliated, and every person having an office or place of business in this state who takes assignments of and undertakes direct collection of payments from or enforcement of rights against debtors arising from such sales or loans, shall file notification register with the state tax department commissioner within thirty days after commencing business in this state, and, thereafter, on or before the thirty-first day of January of each year. A notification shall be deemed to be in compliance with this section if the information hereinafter required is given in an application for a business registration certificate provided for in section four, article twelve, chapter eleven of this code. The state tax commissioner shall make any registration information required by this section available to the attorney general or commissioner upon request. The notification registration shall be in a form prescribed by the commissioner, accompanied by a registration fee of four hundred dollars and shall contain any information as the commissioner may require and, in addition, shall state:
(a) Name of the person;
(b) Name in which business is transacted if different from subdivision (a) of this subsection;
(c) Address of principal office, which may be outside this state;
(d) Address of all of its offices, if any, in this state at which consumer loans are made, or in the case of a lender credit card, a description of its affiliation to any store chain, or national or regional credit card acceptance system, or in the case of a person taking assignments of obligations, the offices or places of business within this state at which business is transacted;
(e) If consumer credit sales or consumer loans, including loans secured by real property, are made otherwise than at its retail store or office in this state, a brief description of the manner in which they are made;
(f) Address of designated agent upon whom service of process may be made in this state; and
(g) Whether regulated consumer loans are made.
(2) If information in a notification becomes inaccurate after filing, accurate information must be filed within thirty days.
(3) The provisions of this section are not applicable to a seller whose credit sales consist entirely of sales made pursuant to a seller's credit card so long as the issuer of the card has fully complied with the provisions of this section, nor are the provisions of this section applicable to a person whose consumer lending in West Virginia is incidental and confined to access through a nonproprietary automatic teller machine or similar electronic communication terminal. The provisions of this section are not applicable to federally insured depository institutions or to other persons licensed, regulated or chartered by the commissioner pursuant to article four of this chapter, article seventeen of chapter thirty-one of this code, or chapters thirty-one-a and thirty-one-c of this code.



NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to transfer supervisory responsibility for registration and oversight of nondepository consumer lenders to the division of banking.

Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would be added.