For Military Lending Act purposes, a covered borrower is any member of the military (or a dependent), who at the time of becoming obligated for a loan or opening a line of credit account, is serving on active duty under orders not specifying a period of 30 days or less; or a member of the military (or a dependent) on Active Guard and Reserve duty. Covered borrowers have many protections available to them and it is important that you have procedures in place to identify them because they may not tell you. They are not required to tell you, and may not even realize they are a covered borrower at the time of application! It is your responsibility to determine if you have a covered borrower and one way to do that is to access the MLA database and utilizing this method provides your institution a safe harbor.
Kevin explains more in the video.