Frequent Asked Questions
You are usually over-indebted when you are paying more than half of your salary to debt, not making timeous payments on your debts and constantly getting reminders for late payments. Or if you are at risk of falling behind in the immediate future. These are sure signs that you urgently need our help. If you delay applying for debt counselling, and once the credit provider has commenced legal action against you, that particular debt cannot be included in the debt review process.
The credit market has recently been tightened by the NCR such that you will not qualify for a consolidation loan if you are over-indebted, not with us or not with any registered financial institution in South Africa. If your current debt status is that you are over-indebted, you do not have the option of a consolidation loan. The only realistic and affordable way to prevent you from losing your house, car or furniture is to go the debt review way. Our debt review process can offer you immediate asset protection according to the National Credit Act and set you on a course of recovery from debt problems by consolidating your debt into one affordable monthly repayment, reducing your monthly debt repayments and interest and clearing your credit record after you have fulfilled your restructured debt obligations.
Service fees are set and regulated by the National Credit Regulator (NCR). 1. A restructuring fee of the lesser amount of the first instalment of the debt re-arrangement plan or a maximum of R6000 (excluding VAT). For example, if you can only pay R3 000 per month our fee will automatically be R3000. 2. A monthly after-care fee of 5% (excluding VAT) of the monthly instalment of the debt re-arrangement plan up to a maximum of R400.00 (excluding Vat), for a period of 24 months, thereafter reducing to 3% (excluding VAT) of the monthly instalment, to a maximum of R400.00 (excluding VAT), for the remaining period of the debt payment of the monthly after-care fee commence in the 2nd month after the amount in point 1 has been paid. 3. There is a legal fee charged by our specialised attorney to bring the application to court, and can range from R1500 to R6000. Legal fee differs from case to case and your debt counsellor will let you advise the exact amount after the free assessment.
Certainly not. Administration only applies to consumers whose total debt do not exceed R50,000 and usually lasts much longer and is much costlier. The debt review process we aim that you achieve a debt free status within 36 to 60 months.
Not at all, we will never contact your employer to obtain any information or to confirm anything. Your debt review application is treated as fully confidential through the entire application and debt review process
You cannot be listed on ITC when you apply for debt review. We simply notify the credit bureaus to merely flag your name that you are undergoing a debt restructuring process. Note very well that, this is not related to blacklisting because you can only be blacklisted when you totally fail to pay a credit provider. Thus, the flag is simply an indication to credit providers that you are under debt review. As soon as all your debt has been paid up you are eligible to access credit finance again.
Not necessarily. However, this can apply if you have an overdraft account because overdraft will be part of your debt and the bank will freeze the account. If you have a normal cheque account and are not willing to change your banking details, we can provide you with debit order cancellation forms which you sign and we send to your credit providers to cancel the debit orders. Provided this process is done well in time credit providers are more than willing to cancel the debit orders. Even though we notify your creditors immediately of your debt review application there is still a possibility that debit orders can go off your bank account. Having said all that, the best usually would be you to change to what we call a neutral bank account where there are no debit orders, so that we can protect your income.
No. We cannot include any accounts in the debt review process where legal action has commenced. It is therefore important that you apply for debt review sooner rather than later. If you already have a garnishee order against you, we can make provision for the monthly amount in your budget and can also take upon ourselves and go a step further to negotiate with garnishor to reduce your payment amount to something affordable to you, but is paid outside debt review.
The property rental is by law not classified as a credit agreement and you will therefore be able to rent a property. In your budget we will make provision for your rentals and can provide the estate agent or lessor with a letter that confirms that you are can afford to pay your monthly rent.
New regulation now allows us to issue you a clearance certificate once all your unsecured debt has been paid off. If you still cannot afford the full bond installment, we advise that you continue with debt review until such time that you are in a position to pay the full required installment on your own.