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Have the NCR & Moneyline Agreed To A Settlement?

In 2014 Moneyline Financial Services got into trouble with the National Credit Regulator (NCR) over recklessly lending credit to people who were receiving child grants.

The NCR said the credit was reckless because the credit provider should not have taken the child grants into account when working out how much the consumers could afford to pay each month.

As a result, the NCR took the matter to the National Consumer Tribunal (NCT) and asked for fines and deregistration.

NCT Rule Credit Was Reckless

Moneyline Financial Services is a subsidiary of Net1, the people who were handling SASSA payments for Government at the time. Many consumers, who were recipients of grants at the time, began complaining that they were seeing deductions come off their grants and bank accounts before they were able to make any withdrawals. These deductions were for airtime and life insurance. Credit that was granted to these consumers was charged at high rates and left many consumers overextended.

‘the matter then dragged out for many years and was eventually heard this year’

The NCT found the loans to be reckless and so Moneyline appealed the ruling to the Pretoria High Court. The matter then dragged out for many years and was eventually heard this year.

Case Dropped

The matter has now been removed from the court roll indicating that the NCR and Moneyline have probably now reached an out of court settlement.

‘the NCR and Moneyline have probably now reached an out of court settlement’

As yet it is unclear what that means for the affected consumers. The credit provider has, however, not been removed from the NCR register of active credit providers.

So, it appears whatever the outcome is that Moneyline has avoided being deregistered.