“Don’t Take It Too Personal” – Grievances on Personal Loans (Personal loan P2)
87,900 hits at 0.19 seconds – that is what I got when I punched in “Malaysia personal loan” in goggle, under ‘pages from Malaysia.’ To be sure, I am looking for first hand experience from those who took the personal loan and trying to find any clues on how personal loans impacted lives among us. Though there are 87,900 hits, only handfuls are relevant to my purpose. Here you go:
Harassed By Aggressive Sales People
Smartbankingcomsumer note: Like credit card sales, most banks outsourced or used contract sales force in promoting their products/services. Typically such sales force is incentivise with high commission and very low or minimum basic pay. That largely explained their ‘persistent’ and ‘eagerness.’
Application Rejected
Smartbankingcomsumer note: According to Bank Negara Malaysia, the level of indebtedness for the household sector remained within prudential levels. Outstanding household loans grew 15.1% to RM304.4bil in 2005, and accounted for 54.5% of outstanding loan portfolio in the banking system (in 2000, it was 45%). Malaysians spend about 6.7% of their income to repay debts. As a measurement to ensure continued sustainability of the household sector, BNM has maintained a credit bureau information system that used by the banks to help assessing individual’s credit worthiness. It is very likely that if Bank A rejects an applicant, Bank B is likely to follow too. On the case above, a hire purchase defaulter is black listed and until the loan is sorted out, no financial institution is likely to extend any credit facilities. The most viable option for Help2paydebt is to negotiate with his hire purchase company and work out a deal.
Misleading Advertisement
Smartbankingcomsumer note: Information collected from bank’s call centers revealed that the personal loan application reject rate is as high as 60%. The main reason was poor credit history. Frequently or not, banks put lot of emphasize on ‘on-time’ payment i.e. repayment ability. BNM provides a free once a year credit report (http://creditbureau.bnm.gov.my).
Feel free to share your stories, view on personal loan in this blog.