allred

BloomTech Slammed with Fines by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for Deceptive Claims

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The CFPB is permanently banning BloomTech from consumer lending activities and its CEO, Austen Allred, from student lending for a period of ten years. Allred founded BloomTech, which rebranded from the Lambda School in 2022 after cutting half its staff, in 2017. (According to the CFPB, BloomTech originated “at least” 11,000 such loans.) BloomTech didn’t market the loans as such, saying that they didn’t create debt and were “risk free,” and advertised a 71%-86% job placement rate. And, unbeknownst to many students, BloomTech was selling a portion of its loans to investors while depriving recipients of rights they should’ve had under a federal protection known as the Holder Rule.