Great Rock Financial is a tribal loan company that doesn't bring a lot of incentives to the world of lending. In fact, they don't bring much of anything.
Just like so many other tribal lenders Great Rock Financial provides a very bland payday loan product that carries a high interest rate. Now just how high is that interest rate? Well, the company says on their website this is "an expensive form of credit" so you know the rates are quite high.
Unfortunately, the company doesn't bother to publish their interest rates online. That's a bit of let down right off the bat because so many other loan companies provide their rates, or at least an example of their rates, on their website. I guess Great Rock doesn't feel that this is a priority for their customers.
The company does at least mention the amounts that they are will lend. Great Rock Financial is willing to loan up to $500 to a new customer. If you are a (qualified) returning customer then you can borrow up to $900. For those of us that are searching for a real loan, or at least something that resembles the old fashioned loans that were available back in 2005, this is a meager offering. And the important thing here is that $500 is the maximum Great Rock is willing to lend to a new customer, it's not guaranteed that you will receive that much if you do apply.
For a returning customer to be limited to only $900 for the maximum loan amount, to me that just makes the case not to use Great Rock Financial. The company is just not providing anything that stands out.
Where's the incentive, where is the value? Instead, we have questions about how much the loan is going to cost. If the individual's credit score or credit history is defining how much the interest rate will be then we're just left to wonder what our rate will be. Then there is the total amount of $500 that's available to borrow. What if my situation calls for $700 and I have a higher level of income? Too bad for me, because Great Rock has the total dollar amount availabe written in stone.
The rest of Great Rock Financial is predictable. You need to have an active checking account to qualify for the loan. You also need to have a job and to make a minimum of $1,500 per month as a gross income.
The standard rules apply for these payday loans. If you want or can repay the loan ahead of schedule you are free to do so. On your next payday after the loan you have the option of paying the entire loan off plus the finance charge. Or you can just pay the finance charge and pay nothing on the principal. Or you can pay the finance charge plus some of the principal amount.
One place where Great Rock does stand out is their options that occur when you repay part of the principal amount and keep the loan going. Normally, when you repay some of the principal from an existing (outstanding) loan you do not have much of a choice as to how to move ahead. You can continue on with the loan, either repaying the rest of the loan on the next payday or just a finance charge, or once again paying some of the oustanding principal with the finance charge.
Here's what is different with Great Rock...
Let's say that you repay $200 of the principal from a $500 original order, then of course you have $300 to repay on the loan, plus the accompanying finance charges that correspond to each pay period you roll the loan.
Let's focus on the $200 of the principal that you have successfully repaid. At most tribal lenders, or standard payday shops, you don't have any access to that money. In other words you need to fully repay the loan before you can take out another loan. Until the one loan (the first loan) is completed then the borrower has no option to borrow any money.
At Great Rock Financial you do have access to this repaid amount of the principal and you do not need to repay the entirety of the first loan. You can borrow that repaid principal amount while still having the outstanding loan in place. This is quite different from other tribal lenders.
Nearly every other lender on the internet (or the brick and mortar shops) require you to repay loan number one completely then you will be eligible for a second loan. In fact, you have to usually wait at least a day or two, sometimes three days, before you can borrow the second loan. So having access to that amount for an interim loan while the original loan is still in place, that's just different.
Despite this oddity there isn't much of a reason to work with Great Rock Financial. The loan amount is limited to $500 and the interest rates are not published, so we don't know what we're going to get until the company puts a loan contract in front of us. That's not very good service, especially when the competition from other tribal lenders has better offers. It's not that Great Rock is bad, it's just not very interesting and there isn't enough information to do anything with the company.
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