Title Lending Bankruptcy
Illustrations for a ProPublica story explaining how title lenders in Georgia drive vulnerable customers into bankruptcy with high interest rates. Includes lead illustration, comic explainer and three sub-hed spot illustrations. Art direction by Max Herman and Lisa Larson-Walker.
Every year, tens of thousands of Georgia residents who find themselves in financial need turn to title lenders for quick cash.
Title lenders use the title to the borrower's vehicle as collateral. In Georgia, unlike most states, these transactions are regulated under pawn shop statutes.
These title pawns can carry much higher interest rates than traditional loans--up to 187% annually.
Those high payments, coupled with other debts, have forced many Georgians to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Chapter 13 keeps a filer's assets from being repossessed and offers a repayment plan, usually with an interest rate of around 5%.
But those protections weakened in 2017 when TitleMax won a legal battle to change how title pawns are treated in standard Chapter 13 proceedings in Georgia.
Now even when a borrower has filed for bankruptcy, title lenders can repossess the car or insist on full repayment of the debt, unlike many other creditors.
