Credit Acceptance Corporation, one of the country’s largest subprime auto lenders, agreed to give some future borrowers a way out of a loan that goes bad. Under a multistate settlement announced September 17, 2026, the company must offer 95% debt relief to qualifying borrowers with risky loans made starting in December 2025, through a program that runs for five years beginning November 2, 2026. The relief reaches only loans inside that new window, not the roughly decade of older loans the same settlement separately addresses.
Two dates that decide eligibility: The Settlement & Refund Recovery System’s four-date rule and claim log fit a program that only covers loans after one date and only pays out after another. Log the loan’s December 2025 cutoff in a claim log →
How the New Off-Ramp Works
The off-ramp applies to loans Credit Acceptance makes starting in December 2025, and it runs as a five-year program beginning November 2, 2026, according to Maryland’s attorney general. New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, whose office also worked on the case, described the trigger more specifically: if a covered borrower defaults within 12 or 18 months and the vehicle is repossessed and sold, Credit Acceptance must forgive 95% of the remaining debt and collect only the remaining 5%.
Maryland’s release adds that the company is barred from filing collections lawsuits against consumers who are part of the program, closing off the legal route it might otherwise use to chase the unpaid 5% or the original balance. That single change removes the threat of a lawsuit that, for a borrower already behind on payments, often did more damage to credit and finances than the loan balance itself.
Why Regulators Required a Forward-Looking Fix
The relief program exists because regulators concluded Credit Acceptance’s ordinary lending practices were producing loans many borrowers could not realistically repay. James said the company “preyed on consumers in New York and across the nation with false promises of affordable loans, only to exploit them with outrageous interest rates that ruined their credit and cost them their cars,” and her office put the average annual interest rate on the loans at more than 38%, with some contracts exceeding 100%.
Maryland’s attorney general, Anthony G. Brown, said the settlement “erases hundreds of millions of dollars in debt for borrowers struggling under loans that should never have been made,” describing a business model built on proprietary score predictions the company used to originate loans it expected a significant share of borrowers to default on. Both offices frame the new off-ramp as a direct response to that pattern rather than a separate, unrelated concession.
A $694 Million Case Behind the New Rules
The off-ramp is one piece of a settlement Maryland puts at $694 million in total value: $60 million in cash restitution, $388 million in debt relief for borrowers whose vehicles were repossessed, $246 million in debt relief for borrowers who kept their vehicles, and $15 million paid to the participating attorneys general. Nearly all of that larger sum addresses loans made before December 2025; the 95% off-ramp is the part of the case aimed specifically at loans made afterward, which is why it runs on its own five-year schedule rather than closing out on a single date like the older restitution money.
That split matters because a borrower could easily assume a single settlement means a single check or a single form of relief. Instead, a person who took out a loan in 2024 falls under the cash-and-debt-relief track described above, while a person who takes out a loan in January 2026 falls under the five-year off-ramp instead, with no overlap between the two and no single notice that explains both at once.
How Credit Acceptance Is Responding
In its own announcement, Credit Acceptance said the resolution gives the company, its dealer partners and its customers certainty, and its chief executive, Vinayak Hegde, said it “provides certainty for our business, our dealer partners and the customers we serve.” The company’s own statement puts the payment to attorneys general at $15.5 million, slightly above Maryland’s $15 million figure, and says Credit Acceptance admits no fault or wrongdoing as part of the deal.
How Many States Are Actually Involved
Maryland’s attorney general lists six states, Maryland, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey, as co-leading the settlement. New York’s attorney general counts 39 states and the District of Columbia as having joined, and Credit Acceptance’s own announcement puts the total at 41 states. None of the three releases fully reconciles the different counts, a reminder that the same settlement can be described differently depending on which office is doing the describing, and that the December 2025 cutoff for the new off-ramp is the one detail all three agree on.
Maryland’s attorney general remains the office that first published the settlement’s terms, including the November 2, 2026, start date for the new off-ramp and the December 2025 cutoff for the loans it covers going forward. A borrower who took out a Credit Acceptance loan before that cutoff falls instead under the settlement’s older restitution track, with its own separate cash and debt-relief totals rather than the 95% off-ramp.
The Paperwork Behind a Debt-Relief Notice
Credit Acceptance’s new off-ramp forgives 95% of a qualifying loan’s remaining balance, but only for borrowers who default within a set window and only after the company follows its own notice and repossession steps. A borrower trying to tell whether a letter about the program is genuine, and whether it reflects the right account and dates, is largely on their own once the mail arrives.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System opens with the four-date rule for reading exactly that kind of notice, paired with a claim log for tracking what each letter says against what actually happens next.
Compare a debt-relief letter’s dates against the four-date rule in The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
This article was produced with AI assistance; a human editor reviewed it before publication.
