The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has revoked the registration and secured conviction of several illegal lending companies as part of its sustained crackdown against illegal and abusive lenders, the Department of Finance (DOF) said.

In a statement, the DOF cited an SEC report that showed it revoked 2,081 firms and secured the conviction of 76 individuals in eight cases for violations of the Lending Company Regulation Act (LCRA).

SEC also issued cease and desist orders (CDOs) against 73 online lending apps (OLAs) and cancelled the licenses of 36 financing or lending companies for various violations of the LCRA and other applicable rules and regulations.

“We are also creating a Financing and Lending Companies Division within the SEC to focus exclusively on the regulation and monitoring of these entities,” said SEC Chairman Emilio Aquino in his report to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III.

Dominguez asked Aquino to intensify its crackdown against illegal and abusive lending companies, as “these are proliferating” with several of them charging very high-interest rates.

Aquino said the SEC will also focus its campaign on abusive lending companies following complaints received by the commission from consumers about the collection practices of these firms that involve threatening or insulting borrowers.

He said the SEC has an online team that conducts regular sweeping operations, monitors all complaints, and goes through the different social media platforms to check on possible abusive or illegal lending practices.

For this year, the SEC began its crackdown against illegal lenders with its successful operation against the Cashtrees Lending Corp, the official said.

The SEC has also been conducting its crackdown in coordination with the Philippine National Police (PNP) Anti-Cybercrime Group, Aquino said.

Aquino said the SEC and PNP were able to secure a warrant to search, seize and examine Cashtrees’ computer data in its offices in Pasay City.

The digital forensic examination done on Cashtrees revealed that a majority of the OLAs handled by the company such as Goodpocket, Easymoney, 365 Cash, and Rushloan were unregistered with the SEC.

“Forty-six employees, including the manager of Cashtrees Lending, were arrested for violating the Cybercrime Prevention Act, and the Lending Company Regulation Act or the LCRA enforced by the SEC. We are expecting more operations (against illegal lenders) to come,” Aquino said.

“To date, we revoked over 2,000 Certificates of Registration of lending companies that failed to secure their requisite Certificate of Authority, pursuant to LCRA. Our next step is to sustain this crackdown on unregistered and abusive collection practices of OLAs,” he added.