ATMs most popular collateral --BSP

Are you willing to hand out your automated teller machine (ATM) card to a lender just to take out loans to augment your needs? Majority of borrowers do. This was according to the results of the 2014 Consumer Finance Survey, which the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) conducted from July 2014 to January 2015.

Results of the survey showed that one in seven households surveyed took various loans.

Aside from housing and real estate, motor vehicle, and credit card loans, the respondents availed themselves of personal, salary, multi-purpose and business loans.

”These were used primarily for business startups and expansion, educational expenses, debt payments, medical, and house improvement expenses,” the report on the survey said.

Most of these loans were extended by money lenders, cooperatives, financing institutions, and state-owned Social Security System (SSS) and Home Development Mutual Fund or Pag-IBIG Fund.

While some of these institutions do not require collaterals, some do.

The survey found out that the most popular collateral by borrowers are their ATM cards, at 39.9 percent. This system is known as “Sangla ATM”.

Under this scheme, borrowers surrender their ATM cards to the lenders, who are given the personal identification numbers (PIN) number of the cards. The borrowers can have their ATMs back once the lenders have collected the payments.

Others are land, 22.5 percent; appliances, 11.7 percent; vehicles, 7.7 percent; and harvest, six percent.

In terms of sources of housing loans, survey results showed that Pag-IBIG is the go-to agency in areas outside the National Capital Region (AONCR) while it is the National Housing Authority (NHA) for NCR.

Aside from these government agencies, the other sources of housing loans are banks and money lenders.