The Department of Information and Communications Technology’s Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre, an affiliated agency, was prompted to look for further measures to protect consumer safety and security due to an increase in online lending applications.
To boost public trust in online lending platforms, the CICC signed a memorandum of understanding with JuanHand, an online lending app, to collaborate with financial technology firms.
The goal of CICC is to deter people from taking out loans from unlicensed collection agents.
“What we see in here, more so often, is the issue of collection. There are a lot of victims who are being harassed by unscrupulous online platforms who are not even registered. And these are the concerns that we’d like to address because kawawa naman ‘yong ating mga kababayan,” CICC Executive Director Undersecretary Alexander Ramos said.
“We would like to help them by leaving them to the registered platforms, that they shouldn’t fall victim to just any application offering financial services. Though it will be small loans, for example, P20,000, they end up paying P100,000. That’s too much. Too predatory,” he added.
Francisco Roberto Mauricio, president and CEO of JuanHand, issued a warning about exploitative tactics, such as exorbitant borrowing rates above 15 percent.
One of the most prevalent scams in the financial sector is identity theft.
“Someone applying trying to get data for another person and trying to borrow in behalf of that person, without that person’s knowledge. So phishing is also included there,” Mauricio said.
“We’re also seeing spikes of people calling and getting the OTPs of particular borrowers and using those OTPs in order to disperse, for example, the borrowed money into their account instead of the intended recipient’s account,” he added.
Resolving these problems will increase public trust in online lending apps, Mauricio continued.
“The last thing we want is to make the borrowing public or the underserved uncomfortable with online lending. Because if they’re uncomfortable, where would they go? Loan sharks, five-six, and that, as we know, expenditure that is actually a worse way of them being harassed,” Mauricio said.
The CICC encouraged borrowers to report platforms that charge more than 15 percent and be aware of hidden charges.
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