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Behind 700% Loans, Profits Flow Through Indian Reservations to Wall Street
Joshua Wrenn needed money to make the January payment for his Jeep Cherokee.The truck driver and aspiring country singer in Madison, North Carolina, got $800 within minutes from a website he found on his phone. When he called to check his balance a few weeks later, he was told he had electronically signed a contract to pay back $3,920 to a company owned by an American Indian tribe.
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A Really Inconvenient Truth: The documentary “Spent” raises awareness of low-income Americans’ financial plight – but are banks really to blame?
To help spark a national dialogue about improving financial services, American Express sponsored the documentary "Spent: Looking for Change." Produced by the director of "An Inconvenient Truth," the film profiles struggling Americans who are ill-served by the financial industry. But it also illustrates another hard truth: our choices can impact our financial health more than our banks can.
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Kenya: Have an Unpaid Water Bill? Kiss Getting Loans Goodbye
If you fail to pay your water, electricity or telephone bills, you will find it very difficult to borrow money from any financial institution.
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- Uncategorized
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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- banking, cash lenders, lending, microcredit
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Small loans a big help for typhoon survivors in the Philippines
The typhoon affected more than 13 million people, including 5 million children, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Even before the storm, nearly 44% of Filipinos lived on less than $2 day and there are now fewer resources than ever to help those in need.
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- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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How Small Savings Can Replace Small Borrowing: A well-designed savings product can help low-income consumers avoid costly short-term credit
Everyone is taught that it’s good to save money for a rainy day. Yet low-income people often struggle to save, leading them to turn to more expensive options like high-interest payday loans. But recent research from Doorways to Dreams shows that a well-designed savings product can dramatically help these consumers reduce their reliance on costly short-term credit.
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NextThought Monday: Why I’m optimistic about small-dollar credit in the U.S.
The dangers of payday loans and similar products are well-known: they are extremely expensive, often with triple-digit interest rates, and structured in a way that easily traps borrowers in a cycle of debt. Yet CFSI’s Beth Brockland sees cause for optimism in the small-dollar credit marketplace in the U.S. - and this optimism could extend to other developing markets.
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The High Cost, for the Poor, of Using a Bank
There have been a lot of reports lately on the growing numbers of people without bank accounts, and on those who have accounts but continue to use alternative financial services such as payday loans. All this has convinced policy makers and many consumer advocates that low- and moderate-income people are victims of “financial exclusion.” They have therefore concentrated on moving these people to banks.The numbers of “unbanked” and “underbanked” people are indeed growing. Seventeen million people nationwide are unbanked, up from ten million in 2002; forty-three million are underbanked.
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- Uncategorized
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- banking, cash lenders, unbanked
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