There are so many new tribal lenders appearing on the internet all the time but now we have a new kind of tribal loan company. Tribal Advance isn't an actual lending company which is a bit different. In addition, Tribal Advance also does not perform a loan matching service which is normally the function of a Native American company that's engaged (tied to) tribally issued loans.
Instead the company pitches itself as an advertising agency. That's odd, because in the end it certainly looks like the traditional loan matching services that I've been spotting so many times when going through the lists of these online lending companies. Tribal lenders usually don't have loan matching services and there's a good reason.
It's because most tribes have a financial arrangement with some outside capital provider (read that as a venture capital fund or a private equity fund) and they have money (infused) to them so that they can originate their own loans. That makes a nice situation for them because there is no middle entity to pay, no company that will be the processor or marrying up a loan application to a lender.
Instead, the tribes simply get their wholesale level cash (which by the way usually pays the investment fund handsomely) and then they loan out these funds on a retail level to the thousands of customers who come through the website(s) of these firms.
Tribal Advance is a strange company because they are a loan matching service and nowhere on their site do they claim to have any tribal affiliation. In other words they've taken the name of "tribal" in the title of their company and they are most likely sourcing these loan applications to a group of Native American lending companies, the firm itself doesn't appear to be a tribal entity of any sort. And I shouldn't be too quick to guess or assume that these loans are being financed through a batch of tribal lenders because at the bottom of the Tribal Advance website their is a note that mentions most (or some) of the applications will be referenced through one of the big three credit rating companies like Experian. That's a big departure from most tribal lending firms.
Tribal Advance does offer the installment loan product through their lending community. There are no payday loans available at this site and that's fine with me. As you probably know I don't see much of a reason to take a payday loan when you can get the greater flexibility of an installment loan.
The problem with the Tribal Advance version of installment loans is that we don't get any information on the rates, the repayment timeframe or any other pertinent data. Why not? Because since the loan is going to be sourced through the lending network (remember Tribal Advance themselves will never issue a loan) we aren't allowed to know anything.
The theory (reasoning, excuse) that the company gives here is that since all the lenders in their network have different policies, terms and rates then it would be impossible to provide that information on the company site. That's all fine except that the firm could post up some basic data, like some common situations that the customers that go through Tribal Advance would face.
Just because you can't provide the exact information doesn't mean that the company couldn't put some results from the past 5,000 loans and aggregate the outcomes from those loans. Then they could say "on average" our customers paid 250% or the loans were scheduled for eight weeks, or something like that.
These are just examples but you get the idea, why can't they give us some basic information based on past experience? The reason is there is no incentive to do that, the cost of these loans is probably so high that they don't want to broadcast that information at any point until the customer is actually signing for the loan.
Overall I don't see a reason to use this lending match service, or as they call themselves an advertising agency, to get an online loan. There are plenty of real tribal lenders like Mobiloans, Plain Green Loans, RadiantCash, Clear Creek Lending, Bright Day Loans and Spotloan, just to name a few. These firms at least will issue the loans, you will only have to deal with them and the rates you'll get at these companies will most likely beat what you'd find at Tribal Advance.
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