Updates from Our Work Fighting Insurance Bad Faith and Predatory Lending

Support the Policyholder Bill of Rights

As we’ve shared over the past few weeks, Protect MI Families is a newly formed organization dedicated to fighting for stronger consumer protection standards in Michigan. For too long, there has been no functional consumer advocacy group in our state, leaving a void that powerful corporations and special interests have gladly exploited.

We’ve already begun filling this void by encouraging all of you to tell your Senators to support Senate Bill 245, which will impose real penalties on insurance companies that act in bad faith and profit by exploiting consumers.

With advocates emailing across the state from Detroit to Marquette, we’ve kept the pressure on, but we have to keep going. If you haven’t sent a letter to your Michigan Senator telling them to support Senate Bill 245, please do so now by clicking here.

Oppose the Payday Lenders Bill

To address Michigan’s lack of consumer advocacy groups, we are also working with the groups already on the ground to create meaningful change. We've already begun making connections by signing onto a letter with a coalition of organizations dedicated to responsible lending to oppose Michigan House Bills 5558-5569. These bills would exempt providers of Earned Wage Advances (EWAs), an exploitative lending service that allows workers to access wages before their payday, from existing consumer protections under current law.

While EWAs are often touted as a way to improve financial health, providers of EWAs charge excessive fees, solicit tips directly from workers’ wages, and encourage cycles of dependency and long-term siphoning of wages through repeated borrowing. These services are currently governed by existing wage and lending laws and, if anything, should be further strengthened.

If the proposed legislation were to pass, EWA providers would bypass longstanding safeguards that already protect consumers and dig workers into even greater debt traps just trying to access their money. That’s why we spoke out against the bill to ensure that consumers remain protected from predatory lending practices.

Read our statement below, on our social media pages, and read the letter here.

Protect MI Families on the Move

Lastly, Protect MI Families made its first in-person appearance at the Michigan Association for Justice’s “Fast Track to Justice” Seminar on May 8th. We are thankful to our coalition partner for the invite and got to share our work with many others in the consumer protection field. See updates from the event on our social media pages.

Always for your rights,

The Protect MI Families Team

First published in Protect MI Families' newsletter on May 5th, 2026.