Prospective homeowners have many options to consider in deciding what type of loan is best aligned with their financial needs and goals. And it’s often possible to get lost in the sea of mortgage lingo without ever really understanding what all of the various terms mean.What follows is an attempt to clarify the difference between two types of mortgage loans that can be taken out for the purchase or refinance of a new home: conventional loans and government-backed loans.Conventional Loans
Conventional loans are loans that are made purely in the private sector and therefore come with no sort of backing by any federal agency. Because these types of mortgage loans don’t have any backing by a federal agency, they typically tend to have a higher down payment and credit score requirements than government sponsored loans.The amount of the down payment varies for conventional loans, but it can typically be around 10%. Now, if you’re taking out a home loan on a house that cost $500,000, that’s going to involve a $50,000 down payment cost.Most people simply don’t have that much money lying around ready to be invested. But, of course, that isn’t the case for everyone. If you’re well off with great credit and can afford it, then there are powerful incentives to look into getting a conventional mortgage. Not only will you likely get one of the better mortgage rates available, you won’t necessarily have to pay for private mortgage insurance.Government-Backed Loans
By contrast, government-backed loans are insured through some sort of government agency. The Federal Housing Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are among three of the government agencies insuring these loans.Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans are by far the most popular and widely used government-backed loans. FHA loans constituted only a fairly modest market share of home loans, somewhere in the single digits just a few years ago.By 2011, these loans dramatically rose in popularity and now comprise 30% of all home loans being produced. This sharp rise in government-backed loans is due in part to the way the private sector has responded to the housing crisis.As more and more households were thrown into foreclosure, lenders in the private sector began tightening up their lines of credit to prospective new homeowners. They also instituted stricter requirements on the type of credit worthiness that would allow one to qualify for a home loan.Because of the stricter new requirements, FHA loans often became the only choice for people looking to qualify for a home loan.The most popular FHA loan requires that the recipient of the mortgage loan put at least 3% down, but 100% of this money can come from an external source. It may come from a gift from a relative, non-profit organization or government agency. So, in at least some sense, it is possible to get a FHA loan with zero money down.There are numerous factors that should be considered when deciding to get either a conventional or government-backed loan. But the same general rules apply. Buyers with good credit should look into conventional loans. Buyers with less than perfect credit who are looking for a low down payment and low closing costs should definitely look into getting a government-backed loan.

How is this a good investment for both the borrower and the title loan company? It is an excellent investment for the borrower. This is why: at this point of time, let’s assume the borrower is in some kind of financial disposition. That means the borrower may have lost their job, can’t afford to pay their rent, may need money for their child’s school tuition; there could be a number of possibilities why the borrower is in search for instant cash. Depending on the borrower’s vehicle value, the borrower can receive up to whatever the maximum the loan company may offer. Some loan companies offer up to $100,000 and others may offer lower loans of up to $5,000. Obviously if the borrower is driving a Mercedes or BMW they will be looking at a larger loan value, but every title loan company is different.Let’s look at the other side of the spectrum. How is this a good investment for the loan company? If we scroll back to the first few sentences in this article, we can see that the title loan company “uses the borrower’s vehicle title as collateral during the loan process”. What does this mean? This means that the borrower has handed over their vehicle title (document of ownership of the vehicle) to the title loan company. During the loan process, the title loan company collects interest. Again, all companies are different. Some companies use high interest rates, and other companies use low interest rates. Of course nobody would want high interest rates, but the loan companies that may use these high interest rates, probably also give more incentives to the borrowers. What are the incentives? It depends on the company, but it could mean an extended loan repayment process of up to “x” amount of months/years. It could mean the loan company is more lenient on the amount of money finalized in the loan.Back to why this is a good investment for a title loan company (for all the people who read this and may want to begin their own title companies). If by the end of the loan repayment process, the borrower cannot come up with the money, and the company has been very lenient with multiple loan extensions. The company legally receives the collateral of the borrower’s vehicle title. Meaning the company receives ownership of their vehicle. The company can either sell the vehicle or turn it over to collections. So are car title loan companies a scam? Absolutely, NOT. The borrower just has to be careful with their own personal finances. They must know that they have to treat the loan like their monthly rent. A borrower can also pay-off their loan as well. There are no restrictions on paying a loan. He or she could choose to pay it monthly, or pay it off all in a lump-sum. Just like every situation, the sooner the better.Car Title Loans: The Pros and Cons
It is very helpful to analyze the pros and cons of a car title loan before you decide to take a loan out. Learning about your financial investment before you finalize anything is a great financial tool to success. A borrower must consider their options fully before making a decision.If you go online to most car title loan companies and read their “about us”, “apply-now”, “FAQ” pages you will see how bias their information really is. This is called false marketing. Just like the terminology “false advertising” most of these companies never state the entire truth about their company. They may hire outsourced journalists and columnists to write their content. Read the content before you make your final decision. If the content is cheesy and uses imagery in their content, the company is probably bullshit. Writing jargon in articles, is not something to brag about, but come on? Really? This is 100% needed! An example of poor imagery content may be: “Tired of thunderstorms and rainy days, get a car title loan today, and turn your day into a bright-sun shiny day”. The content shouldn’t be a story, if the borrowers really wanted to read a story, they could take their “nooks” out and read an article from “Reader’s Digest”. The content should be straight to the point, to get the borrowers’ to want to receive a loan from the car title loan company.The Pros of Car Title Loans
The most clear-stated pro would be the advantage of receiving instant cash. Anyone could walk into their local 7-11 or convenient store and purchase a state lottery ticket. That process is extremely easy; however the probability of receiving a large amount of cash instantly is extremely low. The probability of receiving instant cash at your local auto loan company is extremely high. Unlike traditional banks, and credit bureaus, another advantage of the car title loan industry is NO CREDIT CHECKS. Most of the time, borrowers come to tile loan companies because they’re stuck in financial situations. Their credits scores are usually poor at this point, after collections have had to continuously made adjustments because they couldn’t pay their bills on time. That is a major “Pro” for a car loan company. No matter what the borrower’s credit score may be, the borrower is still qualified to receive a car title loan. Another pro of the car title loan industry (which was actually mentioned previously in the article) is since the borrower is putting their car loan as collateral, it is easy to convince the lender to extend the loan to you.How does a borrower qualify? Like stated before, there is NO CREDIT CHECKS, therefore the borrower is already pre-qualified for a loan at this point. However, the borrower must meet the following requirements to receive a car title loan. The borrower must be over the age of 18 years old, the borrower must be the owner of their vehicle title, they must have already paid off their vehicle liens-free, and they must have a valid driver’s license or state identification card.How long does the application process take? The simplicity and speediness of the application process is another “pro” or advantage for the car title loan. The average online application just asks basic personal questions pertaining to the borrower’s vehicle, and location. The application roughly takes about a minute or less to complete. Most companies get back to the borrower within a few minutes of submitting an application. Once the loan representatives read through the borrower’s application information, they quickly give the borrower a call based on the number provided in the app, and go over the details and process of obtaining a loan.How long does it take to receive the loan? Every company depends and probably has a different loan process, but it usually takes within 24 hours or less to receive the “instant cash”. That is another advantage, or “pro” of the loan industry. Traditional banks, and credit bureaus, can take up to a few weeks to finalize the loans. By that time, the borrowers would have already lost their homes, been in serious debt, etc. Taking out a car title loan is the best financial choice. Check.The Cons of Car Title Loans
Now that we looked at the Pros, let’s look at the Cons of car title loans. Honestly, no financial decision is 100% perfect. Nothing is perfect, but some things get close. If this article was based on telling the reader that the car loan industry is the best financial choice, then the article would be full of shit. That’s why the title is “key-worded” “Choosing the ‘RIGHT’ financial service. Not the BEST. The “Right” financial service. Remember, nothing ever is perfect, especially in finances, but some things come close.The cons of a car title loan are indeed straightforward. The borrower is basically handing the ownership of their personal transportation over to the car loan company as collateral in order to receive a cash loan. As stated before, the borrower can face extremely high interest rates- depending on the company. If you have poor to no credit because of your financial situation, and learn that you cannot pay-off the loan you will be stripped of your vehicle, and instead of being able to alleviate your debt, you will fall into even more debt. At this point, the collections agencies will be completely done with you. The saying “follow the directions, and it’ll turn out right” is extremely important and accurate when obtaining a car title loan. A borrower may also be at risk of taking out a loan from a disreputable company that will charge extra fees on top of the accrued interest, or instant hidden feeds that were written in the fine print in the contracts, that are almost impossible to see, unless observed carefully with a magnified glass. Thus, a borrower must be careful before making a finalized decision in any financial situation, especially when their biggest ticket possession is being used as collateral.Now that this article has closely examined the Pros and Cons of the car loan industry, it is up to the borrower to make the right financial decision. The final decision is the hardest part. The final step is always the hardest part because the borrower now has to make a final decision whether he or she wants to take out a car title loan or choose to use another financial recourse. Honestly, after everything stated in this article, it would seem to be that choosing a car title loan is the right financial service. Again, banks and credit bureaus take too long to process a loan, so why choose them? If the borrower is in need of fast cash, they might want to consider choosing a car title loan.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Mobile Banking is a service provided by a bank or other financial institution that allows its customers to conduct financial transactions remotely using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Electronic Transaction Levy or “E-Levy” is a tax applied on transactions made on electronic or digital platforms.

ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE BANKING

Mobile banking offers numerous benefits such as ease of transaction, convenience, time-saving, managing your finances, and budgeting. Some advantages of Mobile Banking in remote areas include:

Financial Inclusion — mobile banking offers convenient and easy banking services to people in remote areas. Thus, it allows banking on the go and offers all benefits of a banking system to rural areas without the presence of a financial institution.

Accessing the bank 24/7 — Mobile banking provides ubiquitous banking services without the need to visit the bank to have access to services. This offers time to benefit and ease of transacting at a distance.

Cost-benefit — Mobile banking saves the banks the cost of building physical infrastructures (branches) and maintaining branches and staff. Also, reduced costs on the customer side since the burden of visiting the bank for services is eliminated.

Improving resilience in the face of poverty — Mobile money acts as both a savings vehicle and a means of transferring funds during times of economic or environmental shocks.

Strengthening the formal economy — For many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), opening a mobile money account can facilitate access to formal financial services. Mobile money is well placed to address the issue of informality that blights many developing economies and hampers domestic resource mobilization efforts. Mobile Money enables ease of transacting, thus increasing business profits for MSMEs.

Facilitating economic growth — Mobile money has been shown to contribute to economic growth by increasing both productivity and per capita incomes

DISADVANTAGES OF E-LEVY ON MOBILE BANKING

The design of mobile money taxation policy appears to be the antithesis of a well-designed tax system. The disadvantages include:

Inequity — Mobile money taxes as currently structured to create inequity in the tax system. As the tax is mostly borne by the poor and users of the services are subject to additional taxation (unlike bank or cash transactions), the principles of both horizontal and vertical equity in the tax system are contravened.

Uncertainty -. Uncertainty and lack of transparency over taxation systems can have a direct impact on the operations of the tax authority, increasing enforcement costs, as well as discouraging investment.

Inconvenience — The administration of mobile money transaction taxes creates an inconvenience for MMPs who must calculate and collect the tax on the revenue authority’s behalf. There is an additional inconvenience for users of the service for whom remote digital transactions become more expensive or out of reach if they revert back to cash.

Inefficiency — Badly designed mobile money taxes have been shown to have a distortionary impact on demand for mobile money services. This in turn has had negative impacts on overall tax takes, as well as impacting the attainment of national economic and development goals.

EFFECT OF MOBILE BANKING — CASE STUDIES

The decision to impose taxes on mobile bank transactions will trigger so many problems.

Ghana — According to The Fourth Estate Ghana; Although the government projects a 24% decline in transactions when the levy is finally implemented, preliminary findings published by the bank of Ghana indicate the value of mobile money transactions had dropped by 3.2 billion in December 2021, less than 2 months after the proposal to introduce E-levy.

Uganda — An e-levy of 1% introduced in 2018 has led to an overall drop in the person-to-person transaction by more than 50%, and a 24% drop in industry transactions within the same year the tax was introduced according to a report by Global system for mobile communication (GSMA).

Congo — An e-levy of 1% was introduced in 2019. The government had to reverse the tax on cash outs only due to negative results of the levy on Mobile money users such as a decline in mobile money agents (unemployment) and high-value withdrawals by people.

Other countries include Benin (5%) and Cameroun (0.2%). In all these countries, the e-levy has imposed a negative effect on the economy and people. If we want to ensure the financial inclusion of people in rural areas, we need to ensure that we encourage mobile banking by withdrawing the e-levy tax.

Reference:

https://thefourthestategh.com/2022/03/16/e-levy-this-is-what-happened-when-other-african-countries-passed-it/

Purohit, S., & Arora, R. (2021). The benefits and challenges of mobile banking at the Bottom of the pyramid. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government Vol, 27(1).

Charles G. Kpan, Jr. is an Information Technologist with over 5 years of experience in the provision of Information Technology Services and an emphasis on Web Development and Visual Branding. He’s the managing Director of CYGEC IT SOLUTIONS INC. and holds a bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology from Blue Crest University, Liberia.