ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Andrew Cohen, a retired U.S. Army colonel, is experienced in personnel and readiness issues. Upon Army retirement, he was a deputy director for Army Emergency Relief, providing soldiers financial assistance. He returned to federal service as director, Office of Financial Readiness, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, and retired in 2024. Paul Kantwill, also a retired Army colonel, was a JAG officer and is one of the architects of the 2015 DoD MLA Rules. Following active service, he served as an assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leading the Office of Servicemember Affairs. He is a Senior Fellow at McCarthy Hatch, specializing in regulation and compliance related to military service members.

“Deregulation” is hot in Washington, and many trade groups and lobbying outfits are knocking on the doors of Congress and federal agencies to roll back important consumer protections. The latest lobbying outfit to make a play is the American Financial Services Association, contending in an op-ed that the Military Lending Act is “failing” our front line’s financial readiness. In fact, the MLA is working as intended. It helps protect service members and their families from predatory lenders and their practices that compromise national security and endanger American military families.

We know because we drafted, implemented, and had oversight of the 2015 Department of Defense Rules implementing the MLA. We also developed and implemented financial education and training programs protecting our service members and their families in the financial marketplace. After nearly 20 years of history under the MLA, and 10 years’ experience with these groundbreaking new and effective protections, now is not the time to back down.

The world remains a dangerous place for our protectors in uniform and the financial marketplace is no different. For-profit members of Washington trade groups like AFSA make genuine-sounding promises about financial stability for members of the military. But make no mistake, they are part of the problem.

In enacting the MLA, Congress set the bar for reliable and ethical credit products offered to service members and their families. One of the redeeming elements of the MLA and DOD’s implementing rules is that they do not pick good or bad actors. Rather, the rules clearly identify “covered products and services” and identify the terms and conditions creditors must meet when offering credit to covered service members and their families. Creditors (including AFSA’s members) are free to make their own business decisions as to whether or not they wish to offer MLA-compliant credit to protected borrowers.

With misrepresentations and factual omissions, some lenders project a posture of supporting the MLA, while making excuses as to why it should not apply to them. They urge the abandonment of protections that are proven effective in their intent — to protect our nation’s heroes from predatory lending practices. Congress first passed the MLA in 2005, and AFSA states that “the Pentagon in 2015 changed the MLA regulations, restricting service members’ and their families’ access to safe installment loans, credit cards, and auto loan refinancing” — resulting in broad overreach.

DOD did not unilaterally change the regulations in some effort of broad overreach. The 2015 changes resulted from Congress amending the MLA, in the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and directing the secretary of defense to prescribe regulations, in consultation with the financial regulators and consistent with the statute, to implement the amended law.

DOD did exactly as Congress instructed. DOD followed applicable laws, to include the Administrative Procedures Act, and included all of the organizations and entities referred to in the law, in updating the regulation consistent with the amended MLA statute. AFSA’s website promotes its op-ed, noting that while their members support the intent of the MLA, “the MLA has put in place policies that may actually hinder military servicemembers’ access to reliable and ethical credit products, while at the same time the Pentagon [DoD] is failing to hold unethical lenders that target servicemembers to account.”

DOD, by law, has no MLA enforcement power. Congress directed DOD to prescribe regulations to implement what Congress enacted and assigned enforcement to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial regulators.

We agree with AFSA about the importance of MLA accountability and required enforcement. But AFSA’s comments ring hollow as they mention that “the Trump administration has made clear the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mission will be to ensure active military personnel are protected, which is a good first step,” while ignoring that today’s CFPB is an empty shell of its former self.

The current administration’s gutting of the CFPB and dismissal of cases or light penalties levied against lenders for violations of the MLA and other consumer protections are in fact actively harming service members and their families. These actions by the current administration reward the financial services industry while putting service members, their families, and our military readiness at risk.

There is no evidence that the MLA hinders service members’ access to credit. To conclude that because there are lenders who choose to not offer MLA-compliant credit, access to credit is now restricted ignores the functioning of the marketplace and service members’ access to MLA compliant credit offered by other lenders in the marketplace.

Congress’ bipartisan passage and amending of the MLA to protect service members from harmful credit products and predatory practices by imposing, on those who provide credit to service members and the families, a 36% cap on the cost of credit, require certain disclosures, and other limitations on terms and conditions when offering credit.

MLA protections extend beyond imposing a 36% cost of credit cap on credit offered to service members and families. Key MLA protections also prohibit predatory practices such as requiring service members to pay loans by allotments from their military pay, waiving their rights under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, or submitting to arbitration or other onerous legal notice provisions in the case of a dispute as a condition of offering credit.

AFSA’s claim of “little evidence expansion of the MLA has strengthened the finances of military personnel” ignores the DOD reports indicating a 91% drop, from 2014 (11%) to 2023 (1%), in members’ reported usage of payday and vehicle title loans. A closer reading of DOD’s 2025 report to Congress on the Financial Literacy and Preparedness of the Force and preceding reports present a picture of increasing financial well-being across the force since the time the MLA was updated in 2015. Other indicators include increased self-reported financial behaviors of having emergency savings and responsible use of credit, and objective measures of financial literacy.

DOD’s programs are not static. The DOD uses annual surveys and other feedback indicators to continually improve its programs and these efforts are documented in its reports to Congress. The DOD also consults with the financial regulators, as required by law, to assess the execution of the MLA and is prepared to adjust as solid data may justify regulatory improvements without reducing the protections Congress intended.

The DOD with its education and counseling programs, supported by the MLA, continues to build a solid foundation of financial literacy and preparedness in its service members, and support the total readiness of the force.