Soros-backed group that tried to limit S.C. small dollar loans, opening Summerville branch

A group that unsuccessfully lobbied to limit small dollar loans for South Carolina consumers reportedly is opening a new office in Summerville.

Self Help Credit Union, headquartered in Durham, N.C, announced the opening of a new branch at 741 N. Main St. 

During the 2024 legislative session, Self Help and its advocacy arm, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), sought to restrict how installment lenders market their services with Senate Bill 910. The bill did not pass.

S-910 would have regulated and potentially restricted small-dollar loans in South Carolina by imposing restrictions on how lenders market their services to households and which households can be targeted.

Industry representatives raised concerns about how the bill depicted their practices and emphasized its unintended effects, including the risk of potential redlining due to its stringent restrictions on the neighborhoods where lenders could advertise.

Opponents of the bill argued that it could limit credit options and stifle competition in the lending sector for South Carolinians.

“I’ll just say we ought to be very careful with the ways in which the government interferes in the private sector,” State Sen. Wes Climer (R-York) said during a committee hearing on the bill. “And one of the things that historically has yielded the greatest results for consumers.”

Leading the effort to pass S-910 was Kerri Smith, the president of Self Help South Carolina. Smith also lost her 2024 Republican Primary campaign for the 28th SC House district.

The founder of both Self Help and CRL is Durham, N.C. businessman and activist Martin 

CRL has received more than $2 million from left wing political activist George Soros. That’s according to a review of U.S. Internal Revenue Service non-profit 990 filings and the Soros foundation’s grantee reports by the Greenville Leader.

The filings show a sum of more than $3 million in actual payments and future approved payments from 2018 to 2022 by Soros’ “Foundation to Promote an Open Society” to the “Center for Responsible Lending. whose South Carolina President is Kerri Smith. 

While the IRS forms show $2.385 million in grants paid out from the Soros foundation to the Center for Responsible Lending, the foundation’s website lists a total of $3.27 million in grants approved and announced since 2018. 

Self-Help Credit Union created the Center for Responsible Lending in 2002 along with Golden West Financial owners Herbert and Marion Sandler, prolific mortgage lenders who Time magazine ranked in its list of “25 people to blame for the (2008) financial crisis.”

Self-Help announced in Sept. 2025 that it was converting its South Carolina entity to a federal credit union.