Business
Loan App Agents Admit They Are Force To Disburse Loans To People
Loan App Agents Admit They Are Force To Disburse Loans To People
Some agents working for loan apps, which include Palmcredit, Easybuy, Xcrosscash, and Newcredit, have shared some sordid tales of how their employers allegedly made them start disbursing loans to people that never applied nor requested loans and would later begin to harass them for repayment with interest.
The mandate from their employers is to get loans disbursed to as many people as possible on a daily basis and by all means.
And that comes with a target that must be met: For some daily conversion is 20, while others have it as high as 35 and the target often becomes higher as the need arises, according to the agents.
Conversion in the loan app parlance means the number of people each agent disbursed loans to on a daily basis.
To arrive at the conversion, each agent is given 270 mobile numbers of potential borrowers every day, the first target is to achieve at least 90 connects, this means that out of those 270 phone numbers, some of which may be switched off or no longer in use, they must be able to talk to at least 90 people, from which they must get at least 20 people to disburse loans to.
Consequences of failure
According to some of the agents who spoke to Nairametrics under the condition of anonymity for the fear that the company might come after them, latching onto the high unemployment rate in the country, the operator of the apps stipulates termination of employment as the consequence of failure to meet the conversion target.
They, however, give agents the opportunity of being trained 3 times to learn more about how to cajole people into taking loans before being booted out if the targets are still not met.
“Each day, we are assigned 270 numbers to call and we are expected to connect at least 90, that is, have communication with at least 90 customers. Some of the numbers could be switched off, and there could be hang-ups due to poor network, but you have to connect 90. The worse is the conversion rate target is not static, this week you could be asked to have a conversion rate of 35-40, and the next week it could be 45. Conversion here means the number of people who took loans through you,” one of the agents told Nairametrics.
Another agent whose daily conversion target is 20 said:
“I am in the nano department that handles Palmcredit and Xcrosscash. We are expected to achieve 20 conversions daily and this sums up to 120 conversions in a week. If you missed your target in a week, you will be sent for training, if you missed another week, you will be trained again until the third time. If you miss the target a 4th time, your appointment will be terminated.
So, to meet this target, agents most times do disburse loans to people that did not apply so far they have the loan apps on their phones and had taken a loan before. This is possible because we have access to the customers’ accounts on the apps. Again, on the apps, there are some settings that require the customers to stop automatic loans, but many don’t see it, which means that their account can be credited with loans at any time even when they did not apply.”
Shady interest rates
For these loan apps, it is not just about pushing out the loans, the motivation is the high-interest rates attached which the borrowers must pay. Curiously, the loan apps are not open when it comes to the rates charged on their loans, which often led to some borrowers getting stuck in the process of repayment.
One of the agents narrated:
“Easybuy sales script trains agents to pitch a percentage as low as 8% to customers whereas a customer that applies for 100,000 and chose the repayment tenure of 6 months pays back over 70,000 as interest charges, which is 70%. We have complained about the high-interest rate as it is also affecting us in getting conversions, but it only keeps increasing by the day.
“Secondly, we have sold by cajoling customers on promos that never were in place, an example was during December last year when we were asked to pitch a New Year Promo to the customers, where they could win iPhone 11 pro max, but there was nothing like that. Maybe some people can win tomorrow anyways.”
Protest and appointment termination
Tired of the working conditions and what they described as unrealistic targets being set by their employer, some of the agents decided to stage a protest to demand better working conditions.
According to them, the management of the company handling the loan apps, Emtill Solutions Limited got wind of the plan and hurriedly issued an undertaking to be signed by all staff.
Part of the undertaken, a copy of which was sighted by Nairametrics, read:
“I will contribute to maintaining a peaceful and harmonious workplace for all employees. I will refrain from any actions or behaviors that may incite or contribute to riotous situations.
“I understand that engaging in riotous behavior is a serious violation of company policies and may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment. I am prepared to accept responsibility for my actions and face the consequences should I fail to abide by this undertaken.”
Agreement form agents are made to sign
While some of the agents refused to sign the undertaking and went on to stage the protest within the premises of the company, 7 of them were handed their employment termination letter the following day. A copy of the termination letter dated August 4, 2023 reads:
“We are sorry to inform you that your appointment with EMTILL SOLUTION LIMITED as SALES AGENT is terminated with immediate effect, which is also your last working day. You are hereby required to hand over any company material, equipment, and documents in your possession to the Human Resources Department.”
When contacted, the Human Resource Manager at Emtill Mr. Olurankinse Oludotun confirmed that indeed that the agents were sacked for protesting.
According to him, they were made to sign an undertake which forbid them from staging any protest.
“The content of the undertaken does not suggest that they cannot complain about the work, but it says they cannot make a protest while at work. What we are saying is that if there is a need for them to complain, they should use the official means to complain, not protest,” he said.
Company denies allegations
While denying the claims by the agents that the working condition in the company was bad, he admitted that “there is always room for improvement.” Oludotun also described every other allegation levelled against the company as ‘untrue’.
When asked why the company encourages the disbursement of loans to people that did not request it in order to meet targets, Oludotun said:
“Well, you will agree with me that employees have a way of badmouthing the company. For an employee to say they are being mandated to push loans to people that did not request, it is very wrong.”
On the claims that the agents are being given unrealistic targets that force them to be pushed out loans by all possible means, the HR Manager said: “That is not correct.”
Between Emtill and Newedge Finance
While the apps operated by the agents are owned by Newedge Finance Limited, a loan app company fully approved by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), the agents were employed by Emtill Solutions Limited, a company that prides itself as “a leading contact centre in Nigeria, that provides both inbound and outbound multichannel customer service.”
This suggests that Newedge Finance outsourced the management of its apps’ sales services to Emtill.
The agents, however, insisted that they were working for Newedge because all the customers they were dealing with were made to pay into Newedge finance accounts.
When contacted, the CEO of Newedge Finance Limited, Ms. Jessica Ugwuoke, denied any knowledge of the employees that were sacked but was evasive about the company’s relationship with Emtill.
“Emtill is a totally different company, we are Newedge Finance Limited, that is all I can say,” she told Nairametrics.
On the list of approved digital lenders just released by the FCCPC, Newedge Finance has three loan apps registered to its name. These include Palmcredit, Easybuy, and Newcredit.
Loan apps users continue to lament
Aside from the issue of harassment and defamation of borrowers by loan apps which prompted the FCCPC in collaboration with other sister government agencies to come up with the registration framework for digital lenders, many Nigerians have continued to lament different atrocities of loan apps in the country.
Now common across several loan platforms in the country is the practice of forcing loans on people.
Unfortunately, this is not peculiar to unregistered loan apps as many of the currently registered apps are also found guilty of this sharp practice.
Sharing her experience with one of the loan apps, a victim, Joseph Oluwakemi, said:
“I was a victim of Hen loan last month. They paid a loan I never requested into my account, I complained and they took back the money. After the seven days lapsed they started threatening me for the interest. The agent tagged my picture with my BVN and sent it to all my contacts, describing me as a criminal.”
Borrowers are also lamenting the high-interest rates being charged by these loan apps, which oftentimes, are not fully disclosed before the loans are taken.
Many often realize in the course of repayment that they have to pay more than the interest rate stated before they took the loan.
Below are screenshots from the responses of agents( image attached)
NNPCL and Corruption’s Final Throes
By Pius Olasanmi
In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, when Nigerians were still capable of being outraged, when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries was a buzzword that still held some mysticism to bamboozle citizens, during a conversation, a certain man said something profound. The man said, “As a businessman, if I were the owner of these refineries, knowing that they are three decades old, I would take the last money I have, hire bulldozers, raze them to the ground, and obtain loans to build new ones.”
When we pressed him further on why he would engage in such waste, he explained that repairing the refineries is the real waste. He explained that even if the TAM were honestly carried out, a thirty-year-old refinery would never compete favourably with a new one that would integrate contemporary technology. Operating at its best, such a refinery would never be comparatively more efficient. It is therefore pointless to have spent another one naira on the refineries at that point.
A few months later, I had a conversation with a then-lawmaker on an entirely different matter. I mentioned that the National Assembly has failed by not crafting legislation that would criminalise and punish public office holders who foist wrong decisions on the country. The logic: a public office holder need not steal to be punished, wrong decisions should attract penalties for an office holder who opts for the worst of all options when there are less injurious ones.
These established premises speak to the ongoing nauseating efforts at revisionism by those who wrecked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its previous iteration, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Notably, this campaign to rewrite history is traceable to Engineer Mele Kolo Kyari, the disgraced immediate past Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL and his hirelings. They have suffocated the news and the public opinion space with even more lies than they spun while in office.
The Saint Kyari campaign is anchored on convincing Nigerians that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries were fully functional when he was booted out of office. So brazen is the campaign that one of its talking heads challenged the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Engr. Bayo Ojulari, to “inform Nigerians categorically what happened to the functioning refineries he inherited from his predecessor, Engr. Mele Kyari.” The effrontery.
We have not forgotten so soon the charade that followed the baffling claim that Nigeria has spent $2.8 billion on the repair of the refineries, while they are not churning out even a single litre of refined product among them. Saint Kyari and his goons played all manner of tricks, all of which embarrassed President Bola Tinubu, who had counted on ticking off the return to productivity of the refineries as part of his achievements, only to realise that he was deceived into celebrating phantoms. Tragic.
Lest we forget, 200 trucks were arranged as props in a well-directed video clip to celebrate the re-streaming of the Port Harcourt Refinery. The disappointment. Nigerians were to learn from several reports that the Port Harcourt refinery was not producing and was instead using old, stored petroleum products to load trucks. Worse still, the Kyari crew was passing off sanction-tainted Russian-sourced crude oil refined in Malta as locally refined products. More insult was piled on the assault on our collective sensibility with the lies that the Port Harcourt Refinery exported semi-finished products. Brazen.
Meanwhile, Kyari and his hirelings called those who pointed out or protested these glaring scams all manner of names. They hid behind industry technicalities and jargon to create the impression that those of us who knew Nigerians were being robbed did not understand what we were saying. The point remains that a $2.8 billion investment can potentially build a refinery with a capacity of around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Of course, the actual capacity of such a refinery will depend on various factors, including the complexity of the refinery, the technology used, and the location. That is the amount that Kyari’s regime at the NNPCL took and did not give Nigerians refined products.
Fast forward to Kyari’s sack and the appointment of Engineer Bayo Ojulari, who has demonstrated that things can indeed be done differently. Kyari’s exit was expectedly followed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) going after him and his associates. The extent of the theft is better understood against the backdrop of N80 billion being found in the bank account of one of his associates. They went on the run.
Perhaps because the EFCC was biding its time on securing international warrants for the arrests of these characters on the lam, they have become emboldened. They have decided to fight back and rewrite the story of their participation in the greatest fraud against Nigerians. Engineer Ojulari’s renewed mindset, which is entrenching a semblance of the transparency Nigerians demand, became their natural target. The demons that once roamed around the corporation came out with malevolence. They started spinning stories of corruption to tarnish the incumbent who refused to hide their crimes. The objective: bring Ojulari down. But alas, he is winning the war as it stands.
His innocence is proven, and it is glaring that those who want him out are mere charlatans who can no longer ply their corrupt wares because of the impact of the new reforms. Corruption in the NNPCL is in its final throes. The fake news being unleashed against the incumbent leadership is akin to corruption’s last kicks as reforms in the sector strangulate it and its practitioners. The reforms must take place in the NNPCL, whether the industry demons like it or not.
As a parting shot, Kyari and his associates would do well to prepare their defence. In addition to accounting for the $2.8 billion they laundered in the name of repairing the moribund refineries, they must also answer for the poor decision to fix that which is irretrievably broken. Awarding contracts for Turn Around Maintenance of 59-year-old refineries that a right-thinking person had suggested should be demolished almost twenty years ago, when they were only 30 years old, is criminal. Trying to deceive Nigerians that the fake repairs worked is treason.
Olasanmi is a public affairs analyst writing from Lagos.
GRANDIS 5STAR LUXURY APARTMENT & SUITES SET TO REDEFINE LIVING IN VICTORIA ISLAND
Set to Rise elegantly against the Lagos skyline, is the Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites. According to Adejuwon Ademola, The General Manager of the Development company, it is more than just a residential building
“it’s a lifestyle statement. Standing 17 floors high in the heart of Victoria Island, this revolutionary masterpiece of modern architecture will offer a panoramic 360° view of Eko Atlantic, Victoria Island, and Ikoyi, transforming every apartment into an exclusive penthouse experience for the world’s most discerning elite.”
Developed by Dumarco Construction Limited, a globally acclaimed company with decades of delivering complex, high-value projects in the highly regulated petroleum, oil, and gas industries, Grandis 5Star brings unmatched international safety standards, uncompromising quality, and timeless elegance into Nigeria’s luxury property market.
> “When you live in Grandis, you’re not just buying a home—you’re investing in peace of mind, world-class safety, and an effortless luxury experience that will remain pristine for decades,” says Adejuwon A. Ademola, General Manager of Dumarco Construction Limited.
The Gold Standard in Safety and Quality
Dumarco’s roots in the oil and gas sector mean the company operates to some of the strictest safety protocols in the world. Every stage—from conceptualization, design, construction, to long-term maintenance—follows internationally accepted procedures and quality assurance measures. Cutting corners is simply not in Dumarco’s vocabulary.
> “In the oil and gas industry, there’s no room for compromise. We’ve brought that same discipline and zero-tolerance for mediocrity into property development,” says Ademola. “That’s why Grandis will be one of the safest and most enduring residential developments in Nigeria.”
To ensure transparency and prevent (project complacency), Dumarco deliberately separates the developer, contractor, and consultant roles, engaging only the most competent professionals in each respective field. Dumarco’s project team includes globally recognized contractors such as Julius Berger, Cappa & D’Alberto, and Elalan, Migliore Construczione & Tecniche (MC&T) and their partners VENCO IMTIAZ CONTRACTING COMPANY (VICC) based in Dubai, UAE, Business Contracting Limited, alongside leading consultants like Morgan Omanitan & Abe, LAMBERT, and James Cubitt.
Grandis – Investments, appreciation, returns and profitability
Our selection process for the location of the project alone was pains-taking and completely thorough scientific process. Top professional companies were employed to conduct a scientific data acquisition and analytical survey of the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Eko Atlantic before a project site is selected. Analyzing and acquiring areas developmental charts and trends, studying and gathering historical and present sale prices, rental charge and occupancy rates over a 50 year period from every individual street before the selection of the location of any of our developments especially true for the Grandis Project
He adds,
“Our clients and residents can be rest assured that the location of Grandis has been scientifically proven through all existing data to provide our clients with a 100% occupancy rate, highest developmental location, highest rental income and investment returns. ”
The Grandis Experience
Located minutes away from international corporate headquarters, embassies, and landmarks such as Eko Hotel, Radisson Blu, and the Radisson Red, Grandis offers unmatched convenience for professionals, diplomats, and high-net-worth individuals. Every residence is designed for both indulgence and efficiency, with high-grade finishes, smart-home systems, and private amenities that ensure seamless living.
From sunrise over the Atlantic to the glittering Lagos night skyline, residents will enjoy uninterrupted luxury, supported by discreet and highly trained staff, advanced security systems, and a design that prioritizes comfort and privacy.
> “We designed Grandis for people who want everything—security, elegance, convenience, and the assurance that their home will look as spectacular in 20 years as it does on day one,” Ademola notes.
A Legacy That Lasts
With its combination of visionary architecture, peerless safety, and meticulous maintenance planning, Grandis is built to remain iconic for generations. Thanks to Dumarco’s meticulous approach, the building’s service charges are expected to remain low while its value and appeal continue to appreciate over time.
In a market often marred by shortcuts and substandard practices, Mr Ademola says
Grandis stands as a beacon of what luxury living should be—safe, spectacular, and built to last.
“Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites — Where safety meets sophistication, and every detail is designed for a life well-lived.”
He added
Website -www.dumarcoltd.com
Project website – www.26idowutaylor.com
Email [email protected]
Tel / WhatsApp +234 9077777883
GM – Adejuwon A. Ademola
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