Sometimes it is good to return to the beginning and when we look back at the 160 plus tribal lenders that have been reviewed by Native Loans there many instances where facts were discovered, little points of interest were uncovered and some openly obvious situations were pointed out to be much more than they appeared at first. The first tribal lender ever to be reviewed by this site was a company that is still going strong and that is Arrow One Lending.
Arrow One Lending is a regular, boring, tribal payday loan company. If they have anything going for them it's that the firm has been around for a very long time (in Native American lending terms at least) and this should be a sign that the company conducts themselves in a good way. The company website has a lot of security and there should be no problem for anyone who is debating becoming a customer on whether their personal data will be secure or not, because it will be fine.
The real question about whether to use Arrow One Lending or not has not really changed from two years ago when Native Loans first started reviewing tribal loan companies. The question that still remains is why do we (any consumer, any borrower) want to use a lender that offers a higher cost product for the same (or essentially the same) product?
The answer of course from a rational consumer is that we do not want to pay more for the same service or product. And when you spend the time to look at all the tribal lenders, and all the loan services that they offer, this is what is taking place with Arrow One Lending.
The main problem that this lender faces is that they charge 30% interest on a rolling 14 calendar day basis just as so many other Native American lenders do. Now this is not terrible in the sense that they are just conforming to the trend and tendency of the rest of their industry. In one sense they have simply matched the going rate that dominates tribal lending these days.
On the flip side of that argument are the tribal lenders who are offering better loan products, which means more time for the borrower to repay and even more importantly less costs (which means lower interest rates) for the consumer.
There are a few companies that stand apart from the crowd but those that do are Mobiloans, Plain Green Loans and RadiantCash. All of these tribal lenders offer a slightly different product. Mobiloans offers a line of credit that can be accessed at different times. Plain Green Loans offers an installment loan of up to $3K. RadiantCash offers a traditional payday loan just as Arrow One Lending does, in fact the terms and time frames are nearly identical for the two companies.
The only exception that is quite noticeable when comparing Arrow One Lending to these other three tribal lenders is the fact that all three of the other lenders are cheaper to use than Arrow One Lending.
For the loans beyond $500 the Mobiloans rate is only 10% per pay period, which translates to every 14 days which is the time allotted for the Arrow One Lending products as well. Plain Green Loans has a 59% APR on their loans so they are cheaper than both Mobiloans and Arrow One Lending. And RadiantCash has a system where each subsequent loan is cheaper than the previous one, so customers that are frequent users of tribal payday lenders will definitely want to look at RadiantCash as a strong possibility for their next (very short-term) loan.
After we look at all these competitors we have to ask why do people use Arrow One Lending? The answer is that they are convenient and in the end they are not a bad tribal lender, they are an average tribal loan company. Charging 30% interest, while not ideal or as good a deal as the competitors we looked at, is still not that strange when compared to their peers. Although I would not use Arrow One Lending for myself I can understand that some consumers will be fine with their rates and the fact that they may have already established an account with the company.
Not much has changed from the original review of Arrow One Lending, they are an acceptable yet not very exciting Native American lender.
Recent Comments