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Digital has data birthed problematic loans [Courtesy]
He had paid almost everything. After months of dawn-to-midnight riding, the boda boda rider was within a few instalments of finally owning his motorcycle, but the asset meant to lift his family out of poverty vanished in a flash.
That is the story of many riders. It’s either that the bike vanished, was repossessed, or was stolen when they were at the tail end of clearing their obligation to the financiers. One wonders: are the financiers running rogue departments to perpetrate the acts? Or is it their employees who work in cahoots with rogue mafias in the industry to kill dreams?
Let me say what polite finance avoids: alongside the genuine digital revolution, a darker industry has grown, an outfit that dresses in the language of fintech but behaves like loan sharks with a download button. “Loans from hell”.
