Tag Archives: lending company
My Loan Co-Signer has Died – Will I lose my car to the estate?
In order to be approved for credit, about 10% of borrowers in Canada need to give the lending company (usually a bank) assurance in the form of a co-signer. A co-signer is someone who has a good and established credit rating already, and who agrees to assume the debt in the event that the person in whose name the money is lent is unable to pay.
In many cases, the co-signer of a loan is a member of the borrowers family; most other people will not assume the risk, although it could be a close personal friend with a good credit record. In some cases, there is a risk that a co-signer may die before the loan is fully paid back, in which case the borrower may wonder what will happen to the assets purchased with the loan. In this scenario, we will use the example of a car in order to see how the situation will play out.
First of all, it is very important to note one thing; the co-signer of your loan does not, in fact, own the car that you needed to obtain the loan to buy. They are simply a guarantee to the lending company that someone will be able to pay for the car. Ownership will only revert to them if you have defaulted on the loan on your own, and they have had to make the payments themselves. In this case, the paper work will already have been changed to reflect the co-signer as the owner. In this case, you car will be part of the co-signers estate, but otherwise it is your own property.
Of course, the death of the co-signer does lead to other issues, even though the car will still be yours. Probably most significantly, you may have to report to the lending company that you no longer have a co-signer to cover you in case of default. Now, the odds are that if you are a responsible enough person to do this in the first place, you have been sure to make your payments. In that case you should have no problems; heres why.
Remember that the reason you had to have a co-signer in the first place was due to bad or no credit (probably no credit record). Once you have been making payments on a loan, however, you have established a credit record. Lending companies now have a basis on which to approve you for a loan, so you will probably be able to secure the loan without the need of a co-signer.
Of course, most people will probably not even think of informing the lending company should a co-signer die; as long as you continue to make your payments, this will not be an issue. If you do default, though, and the co-signer is responsible, your car will become part of the estate.
Is Private Lending for You?
If you do not have outrageously generous, rich relatives, you might think that, when it comes time to get a loan to buy or renovate a home, that your bank and credit union are your sole sources of major capital. However, the Internet has revolutionized the way we do business and, now, how we can get loans. While it has been accused of separating people from person-to-person interaction, the Internet has actually started to bring people back together in business.
Prosper.com is currently the United States’ largest person-to-person (P2P) lending company on the Internet. It functions as sort of a loan E-bay, allowing people to bid on loans they wish to invest in, and buyers to get whatever amount of money they want, for the price they are willing to pay. Prosper allows people to invest as little as $50 per loan they wish to finance. This enables people to spread their money around a wide area, providing for a wider variety of investment.
One of the most unique and compelling aspects of the private lending scene is the ability for borrowers to tell their story. The lending company has no way of knowing whether someone’s request for $10,000 to pay off their sick kid’s medical bills is true. You might be helping sent Little Johnny off to college or remodel the bathroom; then again, you may just be funding someone’s drug habit.
Private lending companies have tried to make fraud a minimal part of the private lending experience. All borrowers and lenders go through a full credit check and the lending company will send the account to collections for borrowers who default. This may not mean that you will get a return on your investment; some people will sail off with money, never to be seen again, only to return to lending companies with another sob story.
If a P2P lending company collects the funds that you invested, you still may not see a return. The costs of collection agencies can easily take 50% of the debt that the borrower owes you, even if they manage to collect. This issue is starting to be addressed with lending companies, like Zopa.com, are offering investor insurance. They will cover up to $100,000 in investor funds.
For borrowers, private lending can be an excellent way of gaining funds for projects, school, or expenses. In return for lower rates than most credit cards, people can gain thousands of dollars for whatever purpose they want it for. Most P2P sites don’t encourage people with a bad FICO score to apply for a loan until they’ve improved their score.
Many people with less-than-stellar credit can take advantage of the opportunities of P2P lending with less problems than many have at conventional institutions. One thing that helps is the ability to tell a story – whether it’s to explain that you need to build an extra bedroom for your ailing mother or to pay debts left over from a hospital stay.
P2P lending is a newcomer on the scene, owing its inception to the Internet. It has brought back lending as a personal experience, as lenders can choose borrowers based on their credit score… or based on their stories. If you are a borrower, looking for a way to escape outrageously high credit card interest, you might try looking at one of these companies.