The online loan routine makes people unguardable, and they fall into a vicious circle with loans
Those young people who are "trapped" in online loans
Editor's note
Recently, it has been reported that various app stores are conducting investigations on loan apps in response to regulatory requirements, focusing on the qualifications of each loan app, with the intention of regulating the chaos such as illegal diversion of relevant apps.
As a new type of lending, compared with traditional loan channels such as banks, online lending is favored by many people because of its low application threshold and fast lending speed. In recent years, with the rapid development of Internet finance, a number of online lending platforms have emerged, making certain contributions to economic and social development.
At the same time, some unscrupulous online loan companies take advantage of consumers' psychological weaknesses to carry out false propaganda and induce loans, and various online loan chaos ensues: online loan advertisements are pervasive; Unqualified online loan intermediaries flood the Internet; How difficult it is to repay online loan routines; divulging consumer personal information; If the consumer fails to repay the loan within the time limit, he will be harassed by "bombardment" of his address book friends, leaders and colleagues; There are also unscrupulous online lending institutions that collude with training institutions and embed online loans in training, resulting in a growing "hole" in consumers' tuition fees...... Under all kinds of chaos, many borrowers, especially young people, are mired in the quagmire of online loans and cannot extricate themselves.
From today, the Jingwei edition of the rule of law will launch a series of reports on "Governing the Chaos of Online Lending According to Law", focusing on the chaos of online lending and exploring the path of governance according to law, so stay tuned.
□ Deal with the chaos of online lending in accordance with the law
Comics/Li Xiaojun
Lin Fang, a 25-year-old native from Zhejiang, has graduated from university for two years, and is still worried about the online loan she borrowed during college - during school, Lin Fang's monthly living expenses were 1,200 yuan, and her daily expenses were enough, but in order to buy beautiful clothes, cosmetics and travel like others, she borrowed money on the online loan platform, and since then she has been out of control.
"At that time, I thought that the interest rate was not high, and it should be no problem to repay it on a monthly basis, so I let it go." Lin Fang recently recalled to the reporter of "Rule of Law Daily" that when the repayment date came, she continued to borrow from other platforms to repay the loan, and many online loan platforms left her "footprints", and the snowball was getting bigger and bigger.
"I really want to stop living like this, but it seems that there is no going back, and with my current salary, even if I don't eat or drink every month to repay the loan, it will take three or four years to pay it off." Lin Fang said with annoyance. She didn't dare to tell her family, once she saw a call from an unfamiliar number, she would be extremely anxious, which often meant collection, warning and even threats, sometimes receiving more than a dozen calls a day, and she was worried every day.
Lin Fang is far from the only one who has such an experience. According to the 2019 Report on the Indebtedness of China's Young Consumers, the penetration rate of credit products among young people in China has reached 86.6%, and the actual indebted population accounts for about 44.5% of the total young people. Nearly half of young people are spending "tomorrow's money" to a greater or lesser extent.
With the rapid development of Internet finance, a number of online lending platforms have emerged. Compared with traditional lending channels such as banks, online lending platforms have lower thresholds, faster lending, and higher loan amounts. These platforms provide convenience for advanced consumption, but because of the difficulty of repaying online loan routines, privacy leakage and violent collection, many young people are also deeply trapped in it.
The interviewed experts pointed out that the regulatory authorities are tackling the chaos of online lending, and the recent investigation of loan apps by various app stores in response to regulatory requirements is a signal. In the future, it is necessary to accelerate the establishment of a personal information data sharing mechanism, strengthen consumer protection on the premise of ensuring national information security and user privacy, improve the regulatory rules for the collection, management and use of personal data, and help young people develop healthy and rational financial management habits and mature consumption concepts through normalized financial education.
I don't have enough money to spend to borrow an online loan
Lin Fang has a "secret" calendar, on which there are different dates marked every month, and these marks are all "hurdles" for her, because it is the repayment date of each online loan platform.
In these days of painting circles, every strange call will make Lin Fang "in a cold sweat". These unfamiliar numbers are often collection calls, and if you can't repay this loan, it's not surprising to receive a dozen a day.
Now she still hasn't paid off the loan, and she doesn't dare to tell her family, "for fear that they won't be able to bear it if they find out." Almost all of his monthly income of several thousand yuan has to be used to repay online loans, and he has to "tear down the east wall and make up the west wall" to borrow money to make himself "break even".
"Every time my parents call, they always care about me and ask me if I have enough money to spend while working outside, and I feel very sorry for them, and now I have to rely on medication to sleep almost every day." Lin Fang said.
Like Lin Fang, Jiang Rui from Jiangsu also felt that the money was not enough to spend at first, and he wanted to borrow it first and repay it slowly.
When he was in college, Jiang Rui wanted to buy some electronic products, but he didn't want to ask his family for money, and he heard from his classmates that the consumer credit products of a third-party payment platform could borrow money, and the interest was not high, and there was no pressure to repay the loan in multiple installments. She registered information on the platform, borrowed 5,000 yuan for the first time, repaid it in 12 installments, and later borrowed another 3,000 yuan.
Zhang Bao, a native of Shaanxi, first contacted the Internet loan because the tuition fee for class training was insufficient.
After graduating from college, Zhang Bao signed up for a vocational training camp known as "getting a certificate and helping employment" in order to stay in Xi'an to work. But the tuition fee was as high as 20,000 yuan, and she couldn't take out so much money at once, so the teacher at the institution suggested that she pay in installments.
"The teacher said that you can pay the tuition after you finish your studies, find a job, and then pay back a little money every month." Zhang Bao recalled. Under the guidance of the institution's teacher, she downloaded a lending app and completed the registration, and then borrowed 20,000 yuan on the platform to solve the "urgent need" of tuition fees.
What Zhang Bao didn't expect was that since then, she has been entangled with online loans, "having to repay more than 2,000 yuan a month".
At present, there are not a few young people like Lin Fang, Jiang Rui, and Zhang Bao who are caught in online loans. On social platforms, there are many young people who have borrowed online loans to form groups such as "Debtor Alliance" and "Debt Sisters", some of them are to buy a beautiful dress, some are to start a business, and some are to pay rent......
There are too many routines to pay off
What makes young people "trapped" in online loans is not only because they do not have sober and rational judgment, but also because of the various routines of online loan platforms.
For young people who are new to society and do not yet have a stable income and savings, the overdue crisis is often imminent. Under the crisis, some young people who cannot afford to repay online loans often choose to take out loans to support their loans, and as a result, they fall deeper and deeper, and their personal information is no longer private, and they may eventually encounter violent collection.
Jiang Rui recalled that at first, she was able to repay the loan on time, but as time went by, the debt gradually increased, in order to fill the loophole, Jiang Rui began to apply for new loans, and in just one year, he borrowed money on 9 online loan platforms, "tearing down the east wall and making up the west wall", the original debt of 8,000 yuan became more than 80,000 yuan, and fell into a vicious circle. "For a while, it seemed like all the platforms knew I needed money and there would be different platforms calling me to sell loan products. I comforted myself that I didn't want to think about it for now, and that I could pay it back for a month. ”
"There are also platforms that ask me if I want to rent a machine, that is, to rent a merchant's mobile phone to get a loan, and then the lender will send the money to the person who rented the machine." Jiang Rui said that these sales calls usually focus on advertising the ease of borrowing and the speed of payment, and do not mention the compliance of the platform. Later, due to the fact that she borrowed too much money and involved too many platforms, she could not find a suitable platform to borrow, but the repayment date was approaching, and she had to use 3 rental platforms at one time.
What Jiang Rui didn't know was that the leasing model she encountered had been identified as a "routine loan" in the case released by the Judicial Case Study Institute of the Supreme People's Court in 2024.
Zhang Bao couldn't pay back the money, she also chose to take out a loan to support the loan, and finally the collection call came home.
Because she did not repay the loan on time for one month, the online loan platform called her grandmother, who is in her 80s, directly. "I was so frightened that I quickly told my grandmother that it was a scam call, and I never dared to overstay it again." Zhang Bao said that after this experience, her fear of being overdue and having her address book exploded became more and more intense, and once it was before the repayment date, she had no money to repay, so she began to use loans more frantically to support the loan. She used multiple online loan platforms, from the first two or three months to once a month.
During this period, many platforms tried their best to sell her online loan lines. "Some platforms often call me to tell me how much money they still have, promote their interest reduction benefits, and some platforms will tell me that there are benefits for borrowing more than 10,000 yuan, so as to motivate me to continue borrowing." Zhang Bao said that she also suffered from "cutting off interest", once a platform claimed to be able to borrow more than 100,000 yuan at a time, but before the loan, she made herself pay an additional fee of thousands of yuan to unfreeze on the grounds that "the bank card number was written incorrectly", and the money was handed over and never came back.
Zhang Bao is not unaware that he has fallen into a vicious circle, and he also wants to restrain his desire to borrow online loans. She kept unloading the online loan platform on her mobile phone, but when it came to the repayment date, she still installed it again in embarrassment. She estimated that she owed more than 200,000 yuan, but she didn't dare to keep accounts, nor did she dare to think about the ins and outs.
Cheng Chao, a post-00 from Guangdong, has a lot of foreign debts. In order to repay the money, he thought of the various online loan advertisements he saw every time he opened short videos and social platforms, as well as when he took the elevator, claiming "no procedures and low interest". "With a temporary turnover, there should be no problem in paying it back if you have money." With this in mind, Cheng Chao borrowed online loans from multiple platforms. Unexpectedly, in the end, the money was not repaid on time, not to mention, on the day of overdue, the platform's debt collection call actually reached the home, forcing the family to be bombarded with phone calls.
The call first went to Cheng Chao's younger brother Cheng Fei. "After they verified my brother's identity, they asked him to remind me to repay the loan." Cheng Chao said that since then, Cheng Fei would receive four or five debt collection calls every day, "for a week, they asked Cheng Fei to remind me to pay back the money at the beginning, and then they began to say some unpleasant things."
The debt collector told Cheng Fei that if Cheng Chao did not repay the money, he would have to "take measures". In the end, it was the parents who took action to "pay off the debt" to stop the farce.
Improve risk prevention and control mechanisms
Chen Peng, a lawyer at DHH Law Firm in Guangzhou, who has represented such cases, believes that the reason why some young people are trapped in online lending is that they lack financial knowledge and legal knowledge, and lack of understanding of the risks and pitfalls of online lending. Once caught in it, it is easy to fall into a vicious cycle due to the inability to repay on time, and even face legal disputes and credit crises.
"Some online loan companies will conduct in-depth analysis of users' messages and search records on some social platforms to find out potential demanders." Chen Peng said that some online loan companies use big data analysis to accurately target those who urgently need money but have difficulty obtaining loans through formal channels. These clients often include individuals who are temporarily struggling financially for various reasons, such as college students in need of emergency funds. Most of the illegal online lending companies take advantage of the psychological weakness of their customers and lure them to the bait through social platforms, forums and other channels with bait such as "quick loans" and "no collateral".
Chen Limin, a lawyer at Dentons (Shenzhen) Law Firm, pointed out that another reason why many young people are deeply involved in online lending is the irregularity of some online lending platforms in the process of business promotion. According to the regulations, in the process of applying for online loans, lending institutions must fulfill their risk warning obligations and disclose detailed information on the lending products. However, some online lending platforms will take advantage of the asymmetry of professional knowledge and set up various interest rate names, such as base interest rate, lending interest rate, penalty interest rate, etc., to cover up possible high interest rate fees, which violates the right of financial consumers to know.
According to the Interim Measures for the Administration of Internet Loans by Commercial Banks, commercial banks should fully disclose the information of cooperative institutions, product information, and the allocation of rights and responsibilities in a conspicuous position on the relevant pages, and disclose the risks of cooperative business, so as to prevent users from misjudging the confusion of brands.
The Administrative Measures for the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests of Banking and Insurance Institutions also clarify the protection of financial consumers' right to know, stipulating that banking and insurance institutions must disclose product and service information in an easy-to-understand language and in a manner that is easily accepted and understood by consumers, including key information such as product nature, interest, income, fees, rates, major risks, and liability for breach of contract, especially loan products should clearly indicate the annualized interest rate.
"Some online lending platforms often use low or no interest as a gimmick to attract users when publicizing, but in practice, they charge high interest in disguise through various means." Chen Peng said that some online lending platforms will also require borrowers to sign other contracts in addition to loan contracts, such as guarantee contracts, service contracts, consulting contracts, etc. These contracts are often linked to loan contracts, providing guarantees or consulting for so-called loan services, and charging high guarantee fees, management fees, service fees, consulting fees, handling fees, insurance premiums, etc. Combined, these fees tend to make real interest rates well above advertised low interest rates.
Chen Peng also mentioned that in some online loans, there is often a phenomenon of "cutting interest", that is, after the borrower receives the loan, a part of the fee is deducted by the loan company or the salesman of the online loan, which is often used to pay various nominal expenses, such as introduction fees, service fees, etc. However, although the actual amount received by the borrower is less than the amount agreed in the contract, the loan company still calculates the interest according to the full amount agreed in the contract, which damages the legitimate rights and interests of the borrower.
"'Beheading' is a typical violation, and mainland law explicitly prohibits such behavior. However, in practice, borrowers often do not scrutinize the terms of the contract because they are in dire need of funds, which gives unscrupulous online lending platforms an opportunity to take advantage of. Chen Peng said.
Zhang Bao and other online loan parties also admitted that when they borrowed, they only felt that it was easy to get money at the beginning, and did not pay attention to the relevant risk warnings. As for interest, under the cover of interest reduction benefits and membership system, they "don't know at all", and they can only make monthly payments according to the requirements of the platform.
"To prevent the use of loans to support loans, it is still necessary to establish the sharing of personal information and data." Chen Limin believes that on the premise of ensuring national information security and user privacy, consumer protection should be strengthened, the regulatory rules for the collection, management and use of personal data should be improved, and the legal attributes and property rights boundaries of consumer data held by large Internet companies should be clarified, so as to prevent data monopoly and improper acquisition of excess profits.
Qiao Xinsheng, a professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, believes that the supply of legal lending resources should be increased, and this should be used as a starting point to improve the credit market access and operation supervision system, clarify the industry access threshold, improve the industry risk prevention and control mechanism, and actively provide young people with customized, standardized, safe and secure, true and transparent, and risk-controllable financial products and services, so that young people who really need it are more convenient to get financial support, and have dignity and ability to borrow and consume.
At the end of the interview, the reporter learned that Cheng Chao did not touch an online loan again after his family helped repay his debts; Zhang Bao has now found a stable job, and she has decided to pay off the loan within 5 years; Jiang Rui also decided not to borrow online loans anymore and began to plan for repayment reasonably.
After experiencing online loans, these young people talk about their feelings, and they feel that if they have no ability to repay, they should never step into that "beginning"; If you choose an online loan, be sure to keep your eyes open.
Source: Rule of Law Daily-Rule of Law Network