It's been obvious to anyone watching that tribal lending had become very stale. The only products being offered were the payday loans, which have an incredibly short amount of time given to the customer to use the 'borrowed' funds. Then the installment loans showed up a few years ago and that gave customers a longer time horizon to repay, ranging anywhere from eight weeks to two years.
That still wasn't too creative and sometimes you would find me complaining about the fact that these completely sovereign, independent companies (free from the state regulations that dominate all other short-term lenders) couldn't come up with any kind of original lending products or services.
Perhaps the tribes were listening, or more likely it was just a coincidence, but either way we now have some degree of innovation going on with tribal lending. Specifically, we are now finding more Native American lenders who are willing to issue a line of credit as opposed to the static, basic loan. A line of credit is a more flexible lending tool that is often used by banks for their business clients.
Instead of agreeing to a set amount of cash and then issuing a loan for that exact amount, a line of credit instead established a capped amount of money that a customer is eligible to borrow and then sets those funds aside, marked at the financial firm as readily available funds. This money is available to the customer on demand, there aren't any forms or wait periods when the customer decides they want to access those funds.
Whatever the delivery method might be (it's almost always digital these days, as an EFT or ACH transfer to a checking account) the funds will be sent almost immediately, ususally taking one or two business days to get into the customer's account.
Getting a line of credit can be a better option for certain borrowers, and it's especially a good idea for consumers who repeatedly take out small dollar loans over and over. For example, if a borrower takes out a $300 payday loan, and then pays it off only to borrow another $300 loan right after that, then take an installment loan (or another payday loan) a month later, this is a great sign that they are a good candidate for a line of credit. Rather than constantly applying, or carrying two or three loans at the same time, it's a better option to get a single line of credit and work off of that financial product rather than multiple loans.
The line of credit can be utilized several times where the consumer keeps drawing out funds as needed. Many tribal lines of credit are offered between $1,000 and $1,500. A customer good take out $200 from that line, then pull another $200 a week later, then a few weeks later take out $500. The timing and dollar amounts are up to the consumer. Plus, another nice feature is that the consumer can repay on the existing line so that it gets paid back down.
Say a customer has $500 outstanding from their line of credit and they repay $200 of that amount. A few days later (or weeks, or months) the customer can draw off those funds again. The line of credit never ends, it just gets drawn down or repaid. Even if the customer doesn't use the funds at all for months the line is still sitting out there to be tapped whenever the customer decides they need funds.
One more note about tribal lines of credit, a consumer can theoretically use some of the funds that are still existing in the line to repay the current amount due. When you tap into a line of credit there will be minimum amounts that are due on that loan, but the consumer (you) can draw on some more of those funds to repay the current amount due on the minimum payment. That can be helpful for those consumers who are on the financial edge and need to pull more funds (borrow more money) to keep current on their outstanding debt.
Some of the better Native American lenders that offer the line of credit product are Mobiloans, Superior Funding, Sun Credit Line and American Credit Line. By far the best choice (personally speaking) is Mobiloans which has an excellent website that's easy to use and it also has a great deal of web security with encryption so personal data will not be lost or compromised if you apply with them. The maximum amount you can borrow (the maximum amount of an issued line of credit) from any of these firms is $1,500. It's interesting that they all chose these seemingly random figure as a maximum level of debt.
Rather than just grabbing another short-term loan, or getting into an installment loan with a dozen fixed (read that as hard) repayment dates in the future it might be a good idea to instead look at getting a Native American line of credit. This is the best way to have flexibility with your loan, and if you are going to bother getting into debt then you might as well have as many choices as possible.
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