Republic Bank & Trust (ticker:RBCAA) says that it has reached an agreement with the FDIC to terminate their refund anticipation loan (“RAL”) program after the end of the next tax season.

Prior to this morning’s 8-k, Republic and the FDIC were on course to settle their disagreement about (more…)

H&R Block confirmed that it will not offer refund anticipation loans during the 2012 tax season. Block did not have RALs last year.

New Block CEO Bill Cobb attributed the preparers willingness to go into the season without RALs to (more…)

The details can be extracted from the firm’s two most recent annual reports.

There was a significant change to how Block ran its tax business in 2011. During the most recent tax season, Block did not offer any refund anticipation loans. Block, through a partnership with Household Finance, was the first tax company to offer the tax refund loan. Last year, HSBC pulled out of the market. Block reported $146 million in fee (more…)

Republic Bank will continue to provide tax settlement products for customers of Jackson Hewitt through 2014. Republic filed an 8-k this morning that details the agreement.

If it was not clear before, this should make it fairly straightforward that there will be refund anticipation loans available to consumers in the upcoming tax season.

The agreement includes both assisted refunds and refund anticipation loans.

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Jackson Hewitt’s business model will change once it exits from bankruptcy. The only question is how.

I will not speculate on the likelihood that some potential possibilities – (more…)