7 Disclosure Omissions That Expose a Georgia Provider Under SB 90

A missing disclosure page in Georgia punishes the provider. It leaves the agreement standing.

Seven omissions below follow the commercial financing disclosure analysis of Senate Bill 90 with the account of its May 2023 signing and January 2024 start, against the federal provision that removes business credit from national disclosure duties. Georgia placed its regime inside the Fair Business Practices Act for covered transactions consummated on or after January 1, 2024. The law tests each file once, before funds move. Each item below states the duty beside the consequence the statute provides.

Timing of the Disclosure

Before consummation, before the recipient signs the final papers, the provider must deliver one early disclosure for the transaction. Later modifications, forbearances, and changes to a consummated transaction require no new page. A peculiar feature of the Georgia scheme is its single test point: one page, due before funds move, with no sequel.

The duty applies to covered transactions consummated on or after January 1, 2024. Files closed before that date answer different questions. Counsel ensures the closing date is established before the checklist reaches the file.

A closing conducted without the early page violates the section on the date of closing. Steps a recipient takes, or does not take, in the days before funds move shape the record for everything after.

Total Funds Provided

Section 10-1-393.18 places the amount figures first. The disclosure must state the total funds provided, the headline number from which every cost comparison proceeds.

In a hypothetical file, an advance of eighty thousand dollars with a four thousand dollar charge withheld at funding shows the full eighty thousand dollar figure on the page. The withheld charge belongs to the disbursement line. The headline total does not absorb it.

Funds Disbursed After Withheld Fees

Where deducted or withheld fees reduce the advance, the disclosure must also state the total funds disbursed beside the total provided. The disbursed figure is the spendable remainder, the part of the advance that survives contact with the fee schedule. The smaller figure is omitted in order to keep attention on the larger one, which is why the section demands both.

Two figures on the page prevent the most common misunderstanding in the file.

Finance Charge Total

Price without a dollar total is a slogan. The disclosure must state the total amount payable to the provider as finance charges, a figure that translates a factor rate into dollars an extremely busy recipient can compare.

How courts will treat a page that states the factor with precision but omits the dollar total remains an open question under the section.

Counsel ensures the stated total is tested against the agreement and the wire record before advising on price.

Annual Percentage Rate Equivalent

Comparison shopping dies without a common denominator. The disclosure must state the total dollar cost expressed as an annual percentage rate, a yearly figure that places advances of different size and duration on the same scale even though the underlying contracts share almost nothing else in structure, timing, or collection method.

The rate figure supplements rather than replaces the dollar totals. The law protects comparison shopping more than it protects any individual borrower.

The statute demands the yearly rate even where the contract price is stated as a factor.

Payment Amounts and Variable Terms

Cash flow planning fails without a schedule it can test. The disclosure must state the manner, frequency, and amount of each payment.

Where payments may vary, the page must also give the initial estimated payment with the methodology for calculating variable amounts and the circumstances that cause variation. For advances collected as a share of receipts, the methodology sentences carry the entire weight of the disclosure. The schedule states a projection rather than a promise.

Rarely does a recipient learn the methodology before asking for it in writing.

Prepayment Costs and Agreement References

The disclosure must state whether any prepayment costs or discounts exist. A page that names a cost must also name the agreement paragraph that creates it.

Borrowers who repay ahead of schedule learn the price of exit from this line. The line appears whether or not early payoff was ever discussed. An apology for a missing prepayment figure, even briefly offered, does not create a figure where none existed.

What a Violation Costs the Provider

Since January 2024, the Attorney General holds the only key to this statute. That office enforces its provisions to the exclusion of all other parties. The section creates no private right of action for the recipient. The disclosure page is the rare document that operates against its author.

Penalties run to five hundred dollars for a first violation within an aggregate cap of twenty thousand dollars, and one thousand dollars for each repeat violation within an aggregate cap of fifty thousand dollars. The statute imposes no implementing rulemaking duty on the Attorney General. Counsel should confirm how the caps apply across a portfolio of files, a point on which the inspected authorities stay silent.

Paper the provider never delivered still leaves the balance where the agreement placed it.

Veteran funders can recite these items from memory. That fluency seldom produces a complete page, and the headline total still receives the most attention while deserving extremely little trust. I have yet to see a missing page erase a balance, though files continue to arrive as if one might.

Counsel confirms coverage before applying any of the seven items. Transactions above five hundred thousand dollars fall outside the section. Whether a given advance counts as a commercial loan, an open end plan, or an accounts receivable purchase belongs to an analysis conducted one file at a time (and pure future receivables purchases sit closest to the line).

Reviewing the File With Delancey Street

Delancey Street works with businesses carrying MCA balances and other business debt as a settlement company, not a law firm. Independent counsel handles legal questions while advisors review and assess the disclosure file, with more information through the Delancey Street site.

Simply state that the file is under review before any new authorization leaves the business. Resist the urge to read a missing page as forgiveness of the balance.

Disclosure law narrows the distance between price and understanding. The file rewards the party who reads it first. A first conversation establishes the facts of the file, and nothing about the outcome is assumed at that stage.