Ethics are not just for Sundays

after slating wonga..( and I personally think that the payday loan people should be banned)........The new archbishop now has to try and explain why the Church of England have shares in the company.....

what happened to ethical investments.........

 

His new way forward is to have the church set up credit agreemenst for the public.......but will have to charge around 30% apr to make a profit,,,,,,,,,surely with families in so much desperate need the church could afford to run them without making a profit

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Comments

  • Wonga was started by an old running partner of mine. He came to this country in 2006 with the idea of offering loans, short term to pay day and charge for it. They are not meant to be affordable long term loans. The Wonga website is upfront and explains exactly how much you will pay back if you borrow x amount and pay back in x time. No hidden charges and fees charged by banks and other financial institutions. 

     

  • the rates are just unbelievable and the whole system then just gets people into a cycle of debt

    i think there should be much more provision in the communities at similar help but with people face to face who can also give advise on how to get out of the cycles......at very low rates

  • We got charges £75 by our bank for going a couple of hundred quid overdrawn for a few days. If I calculated the apr on this I'm sure it would be in the thousands.

    I don't think its really appropriate to apply the same measure to these high risk, high admin loan as you would to a 25 year mortgage.

    I do think there needs to be some control other than market forces. However, the banking industry is very risk averse at the moment, so if you have a poor credit history you either pay through the nose or go without.

    As for the church being involved in unethical practices, well what is new there?

  • I imagine the £75 includes charges for the over draft as well as iinteresting

     

    i really think this is a good thing for the church to get involved in, and if it dives pay day loan companies out of business great

  • @seren nos - not necessarily cyclical. It depends how stupid the borrower is.  There's plenty of help "in the community" already.

  • I also noted that the church ethical p[olicy means that they invest in conpanies that deal with porn as long as its not more than 3% of the business.and tobacco and gambling etc as long as its not more than 25%...the same with alcohol and embryo research......

    so if its a big massive corporation you can deal in just about anything and still be considered ethical........

     

    and the church invest 125Million a year in spouses loans..wonder why they loan to the spouses and not the employees

  • SuperCazSuperCaz ✭✭✭

    If you are looking for logic and reasoning then don't go looking in the church

  • It would be fascinating to see the church get into the moneylending business

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    Wonga has simply taken advantage of the fact that vast numbers of people spend all their money as soon as they get it. 

    And always will.

    Savers they're not.

    🙂

  • MuttleyMuttley ✭✭✭

    This seems to be as much about usury as it is about the convoluted and sometimes hard-to-fathom ownership structure of many businesses.

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    Wonga was funded by 'venture capitalists'.

    So I read somewhere.

    I don't understand the systems these businesses use either. Its like they are controlled by aliens. A bit like the film ,The Man who Fell to Earth.

    🙂

  • I don't know about venture capalist.Was just some straight up bloke I ran with on Sundays. Nobody forced these people to take out the loans. The terms are clear from the start.

  • SuperCazSuperCaz ✭✭✭

    I don't think the ethical issue is with Wonga.  Its a reflection of society. People shouldn't be put in a situation where the services of companies like Wonga are required.  We don't teach our children (as parents or at school) how to manage our money and there is getting less and less stigma attached to being in debt.  Once upon a time it was considered shameful but these days it is the norm.

  • no one forces people to take drugs.apart from circumstances maybe.......so lets leave the drug barons and pushers alone.....

  • The illegal loan sharks would welcome the demise of Wonga. Better legislation is needed to control them but they must be careful not to play into the hands of much worse unregulated lenders.

  • I can honestly say that I do not agree with the way they are run........But I can also confirm that whilst slagging them off I do not own any shares in them 

  • SuperCazSuperCaz ✭✭✭

    Are you sure Seren?  Do you have a pension or ISA and if so do you know exactly what investments they make?  My point is that it is almost impossible to know what companies you are supporting indirectly

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    In the late 80's I attempted (for 3 months) to persuade people to take out personal pensions. Waste of time. They just weren't having it. They had a lifestyle to maintain & aspire to and that meant keeping and spending all their money.

    The long term implications of their actions wasn't something they wanted to know about. So I left them to to it and took my own advice.

    Early retirement anyone?

     

    🙂

  • no pension or isa....image......only pension that I have accrued is in the treasury 

     

     Ric ..were you also one of those oeople who were persuading NHS workers by their thousands to opt out of the NHS scheme to open a private pension.........

    I can remmeber whole wards and whole intakes of student nurses all being signed up by the same person..........who must have made 1000's out of tricking them into an inferior product......

     

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    Seren nos, 

    It was considered by the manager of our branch that persuading workers out of an occupational scheme (especially the NHS) to open a private pension an act bordering on the criminal.

    He fired a guy for doing this. (1988)

    The essence was that it was impossible to guarantee that the accumulated benefits via equities would out perform schemes based on length of service, final salary etc.

    I never managed to sell anything to anyone except my own colleague and vice versa. It was the only way either of us could get paid. It was desparate. Our faces just didn't fit. No contacts or net-work.

    I did however pile in the maximum % allowed by law and have never stopped paying. It was/is the primary out going that precedes all others.

     

     

    🙂

  • Sussex Runner NLR wrote (see)

    Wonga was started by an old running partner of mine. He came to this country in 2006 with the idea of offering loans, short term to pay day and charge for it. They are not meant to be affordable long term loans. The Wonga website is upfront and explains exactly how much you will pay back if you borrow x amount and pay back in x time. No hidden charges and fees charged by banks and other financial institutions. 

    image 

    And by thier works shall thee know them.  

  • when i was only working 7 hrs a week i did pay avcs as well as my normal pension......but when i had to stop working the rules said that i could not pay into a pension scheme even if I had the money to do so.....

    legal and general were rife at getting people out of the NHS scheme.......

    but then a few years later it did pay for me to work every sunday on double time getting the info to restore the pensions.......so I benefitted at a time when i really needed the money 

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    The 12 weeks I spent trying to be a financial advisor has subsequently turned out to be the most useful 12 weeks I've spent anywhere.

    A financial education should be compulsory. Its a cornerstone of our entire existance.

    Even my lad at 16 could tell you the difference between various types of mortgages, types of pensions, interest rates and the rest. Basic stuff. A mystery to masses.

     

     

    🙂

  • I do feel a bit aggrieved that i can't go for any compensation .......I wouldn't let the financial advisors sell my an endowment mortgage back in the late 80's when they were telling me it would pay off the mortgage and give me 2 or 3 times the amount in cash as well.......I was a mug not to take it up,.........

    i refused to opt out of my final salatired pension scheme when approached and i never took up payment protection for anything....

    so for being sensible I can't claim any money back nowimageimage

  • RicFRicF ✭✭✭

    I tried for compensation for a spell of PPI but I suppose a couple of hundred pounds wasn't what the vultures wanted.

    I'll never forget the 'mortgage advisor' in the Halifax trying her damndest to get me to agree to an endowment mortgage. I already knew the product to be suspect, but really I wanted to be able to get rid of the mortgage as soon as I could (took 9 years 11 months) so a 'repayment' version was best.

    That idea was from New Zealand. They consider mortgages a waste of money so encourage early repayment. The money saved on interest can then be used for investment.

    The advice was buy the cheapest property in the best area. Throw every spare bit of cash at the loan. Get rid. 

     And all off below average wages.

     

    🙂

  • Its a difficult one this. I see both points of view and I know people who have gone both ways. IE loan sharks and these horrible loan companies. I say well done to the Arch Bish trying to be seen to do something but I am not sure that it fits my way of thinking theologically. But thats beside the point. There are other options out there if people need money. These companies offer low sums of money with huge APR. If these people need money for food then their are now very well organised food banks, if they need it to cover mortgages then its a slippery slope and borrowing small sums of money isn't going to help anyway unfortunately.

    But if used correctly the loan companies can work out but they are aimed at people sitting at home all day on benefits (sometimes not their own fault)  and offering them a 1000£! You only need to watch Jeremy Kyle in the morning to see the adverts and the kind of people its aimed at, its usually loan companies and Bingo games. Perhaps it should be reigned in a bit and not aimed at the vulnerable

  • My eldest is useless with money.....he really is impulsive........Now I don't know if he would ever know where to find a loanshark....or would be brave enough to go and mix with the criminal types..........

    But the payday loan people can be done on his mobile without any embarrissing questions.....and in no time....he would have the money...

    He isn't capable of looking after his own finances..but would a payday loan company know that.......

  • MikeFrog wrote (see)

    It would be fascinating to see the church get into the moneylending business

    What would Jesus say? image

  • A women this morning on telly; She needed to borrow 275 pounds to buy a new oven. She borrowed it, aiming to pay it back at relatively lower interest rates in 10 days ( as they are designed) but couldn't pay it back so after a year owes 10,000. Moral of the story? Use the hob or make sandwhiches until you can afford to buy it. If you don't have money this week what makes you think you will have it next week? Why can't people get that?

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