Rick Lowe
I find myself in agreement with the pronouncements Mr. Dionisio D'Aguilar more often than not but recently we seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.
His comments regarding banks and his suggestion that there is no truth in lending leaves me bewildered. See the full story in The Tribune Business here…
Of course I can only speak to personal experience, and as a former loans officer in a bank, and unless things have changed we made sure to tell our clients what interest rate they were paying and the term of the loan etc as he suggests.
Then to suggest that people can't figure out what they are paying back is a mystery. This would suggest a weakness on our behalf, not the banks.
It seems quite simple to multiply ones monthly payment by the amount of months to arrive at this number to me.
There might be many valid complaints to issue against banks but I do not think this is one of them.
Customers are smart enough to know what they are getting into and banks do not steal from their clients. Maybe terms can be better at times, but I think to suggest that banks intentionally hide information from their clients is misleading.
I would rather encourage society to save more before berating the banks for unbecoming behaviour. After all, with more savings and higher down payments, meaning less risk for the bank, the terms might be better for the borrower.
What's your take?
I believe bank interest rates are just ridiculous in this country, which is why banks like them so much, and probably wouldn’t be as bad if there was true competition in our commercial banking sector which there is not. I agree that it is fairly easy to find out what your total payment amount will be by multiplying the monthly payments by the number of months, in fact its just plain stupid not do so before you takeout a loan. The problem is we don’t like to save, or lack the self-control to do so. Personally I would never take out a consumer loan in this country for a car, vacation, furniture, appliances etc, the day I will buy a brand new car in this country is the day when am able to go on the lot and buy it outright, until then saving up and buying decent second hand cars will do for me, similarly like saving up to do other things like go on vacation etc. I think this is the best route for most middle class Bahamians but few lack the self-control to do so and if much more did the banks especially Commonwealth Bank would take serious profit loses.