This new tribal lender is a bit of hard one to say (and to write), it's Multiloan Source.
Or is it Multi-Loan Source? Or maybe it's MultiLoanSource which is how the company website has the company name listed.
No matter how we pronounce or spell out the company name this is not much of a landmark operation in the world of Native American lending. Unfortunately for MultiLoanSource (and for us, the consumers of short-term loans) we do not have anything new or inventive with this new tribal lender. Instead we have a sad, repetitive situation where we have the loan company trying to 'imitate' being a true installment lender but in fact are just a payday lender in disguise.
Does that make sense? If not, let me explain the disappointing mechanics of how this works...
For a few years there were a small group of Native American lenders that offered true installment loans. The loan amounts would range from up to $10K, which was the top amount any lender would provide and the $10K amount was specifically a loan that only Western Sky Financial would issue, to the $3K top level loans which a number of firms would provide.
These $3K installment lenders included (and still include to this day) Plain Green Loans, Great Plains Lending, Clear Creek Lending (this firm was acquired and is gone) and Superior Funding (has a number a restrictions for who can qualify for a loan) and a few others. These tribal lenders provided what I would describe as an actual installment loan against a decent amount of cash.
Some of the tribal payday lenders must have been watching these installment loan shops and decided they wanted to take on some of that business. But those same firms did not want to provide the higher dollar level that is normally associated with getting a tribal loan. Instead they came up with the brilliant idea of merging the low dollar loan amounts with a drawn out time frame to repay the loan (an installment loan equivalent amount of time) and that has been the hot lending product for tribal lenders for the last two years.
This is what we are encountering with our new tribal lender MultiLoanSource. The management (and/or owners) at Multi-Loan-Source have decided that rather than get labeled as the dreaded tribal payday lender they instead wanted to advertise themselves as a Native American installment loan provider.
This is a nice pitch and a nice try, but sorry to MultiLoanSource, it's not going to work. At least not here with this review because we have run into this situation many other times with many other lenders before this company even existed.
Now that's not to say this company will not be successful because they just might get a good number of loan hungry (who have not been informed or done their homework) to sign-up for these lower quality loan products. But for you (reading this article right now) let's turn to a real installment lender (who are tribally-based just like MultiLoanSource) who offer loans that have higher dollar amounts, lower interest rates and a longer time to repay than the 8 repayment periods (16 calendar weeks) that this firm is offering.
Before you go with any of these tribal shops that provide loans of less than $500, try looking at Mobiloans (technically a line of credit provider that operates quite a bit like an installment lender) or Plain Green Loans. If those companies don't work for you then look at Great Plains Lending which became one of the largest tribal installment lenders after Western Sky Financial faded out.
If none of these tribal installment shops want to work with you (and they may not because of what state you happen to live in) then try RadiantCash. Even though RadiantCash is a payday lender they are much better than the typical paycheck debt service. And even though they are not technically a payday lender I have to throw Multi-Loan into that pile because their rates and structure are too similar to the multitudes of tribal debt floaters that try to push the 14 day loan.
For me I just can't find a reason to use MultiLoanSource as my personal provider of short-term debt. And I am not able to find a reason I can suggest the company to you, either. Tribal loans are nice because you don't need credit or a credit score, but that doesn't mean you should settle for the first company you find.
Recent Comments