;
  • Report:  #143214

Complaint Review: Beneficial Finance - Prospect Hieghts Illinois

Reported By:
- salisbury, Maryland,
Submitted:
Updated:

Beneficial Finance
beneficial.com Prospect Hieghts, Illinois, U.S.A.
Web:
N/A
Categories:
Tell us has your experience with this business or person been good? What's this?
As a former employee with Beneficial in Salisbury Md I must say this is a check your morals at the door company to work for. We were required to get 2-3 realestate loan applications per day before we could go home each day. We were required to sell high cost mortgages at all costs.

The hook was start with a 24% unsecured loan, 19.98% no appraisal 2nd mtg then a 8-10% 1st mortgage did I mention the 5.13% in origination fee's? Ouch, they used to be 7.25% We were told to do what ever it took to get deals to close by branch, district and regional managers. This meant over value realestate value when no appraisal was required manipulate income and debt. A common practice was also to not quite payoff creditors by changing balances in the computer system. This left the customer with balances of as much as $10,000 left on a car we "told" them we were paying off. When the no income loans were bieng done and the customers ratio's were out of line you simply gave them a raise.

Insurance and ancillary products are a huge profit for the company as well as worth up to several thousand dollars in comission to the managers per month. We were forced to pack the insurance - this is not the company motto but "do what you have to do" to increase numbers. Does a 60 year old couple really need a 10 yr prepaid legal plan for $1,799 financed at 24%?

Don't even get me started on how employee's were treated as our company turnover annually was 37%

John

salisbury, Maryland
U.S.A.


8 Updates & Rebuttals

Debbie

Richmond,
Virginia,
U.S.A.
The office in Richmond Virginia harrasses continually to get auto draft and insurance

#2Consumer Comment

Sun, April 08, 2007

I have had a loan with Beneficial for 1 year and have had at least 30 phone calls from them trying to set me up with auto draft and to get insurance. You have to hang up on them. They will not take no for an answer and they get absolutley nasty when you won't do it. I would never give those people access to my bank account. They have proven to be Crooks and their home office defends them.


Liz

Commerce,
Texas,
U.S.A.
Beneficial Question

#3Consumer Comment

Tue, November 01, 2005

I just have a question for the employees of Beneficial. Does Beneficial give unsecured personal loans? Due to a divorce my credit basically sucks, but I would like to get a LEGITIMATE loan to start over and wipe everything clean - is that possible???????


Lee

Indianapolis,
Indiana,
U.S.A.
My Question is

#4UPDATE Employee

Sat, October 08, 2005

To the person who wrote in saying that he watched an employee specifically doctor information so that he could obtain a loan through our company. As an underwriter for household, it is my job to make sure that everything that is submitted is verified or documented that it has been verified...I.E income, mortgage balances...credit balances showing on the customers credit bureau..if an agent does submit something that is different from what is showing on the credit bureau or looks suspicious, it is my job to make them fax me verification of the variance...and that verification often comes from the customers themselves....so my question is if you know that you can not either afford the loan or afford a loan of that amount then why submit documentation that basically is telling us that you can, when in fact you know that you can't or when the loan amount is reduced you call in cussing and fussing about it....basically the agents in the branch do no underwrite the loans we do and as stated before the information that we request does not come from the agents it comes from you the customer....I feel very good about the company that I work for and know for a fact that the majority of the underwriters are all trying to work for our customers best interest and not trying to make sure that a customer is going to end up getting something and then that account ending up in the collections department the following month ....and I would also like to take this time out to thank every loyal customer out there


Lee

Indianapolis,
Indiana,
U.S.A.
My Question is

#5UPDATE Employee

Sat, October 08, 2005

To the person who wrote in saying that he watched an employee specifically doctor information so that he could obtain a loan through our company. As an underwriter for household, it is my job to make sure that everything that is submitted is verified or documented that it has been verified...I.E income, mortgage balances...credit balances showing on the customers credit bureau..if an agent does submit something that is different from what is showing on the credit bureau or looks suspicious, it is my job to make them fax me verification of the variance...and that verification often comes from the customers themselves....so my question is if you know that you can not either afford the loan or afford a loan of that amount then why submit documentation that basically is telling us that you can, when in fact you know that you can't or when the loan amount is reduced you call in cussing and fussing about it....basically the agents in the branch do no underwrite the loans we do and as stated before the information that we request does not come from the agents it comes from you the customer....I feel very good about the company that I work for and know for a fact that the majority of the underwriters are all trying to work for our customers best interest and not trying to make sure that a customer is going to end up getting something and then that account ending up in the collections department the following month ....and I would also like to take this time out to thank every loyal customer out there


Lee

Indianapolis,
Indiana,
U.S.A.
My Question is

#6UPDATE Employee

Sat, October 08, 2005

To the person who wrote in saying that he watched an employee specifically doctor information so that he could obtain a loan through our company. As an underwriter for household, it is my job to make sure that everything that is submitted is verified or documented that it has been verified...I.E income, mortgage balances...credit balances showing on the customers credit bureau..if an agent does submit something that is different from what is showing on the credit bureau or looks suspicious, it is my job to make them fax me verification of the variance...and that verification often comes from the customers themselves....so my question is if you know that you can not either afford the loan or afford a loan of that amount then why submit documentation that basically is telling us that you can, when in fact you know that you can't or when the loan amount is reduced you call in cussing and fussing about it....basically the agents in the branch do no underwrite the loans we do and as stated before the information that we request does not come from the agents it comes from you the customer....I feel very good about the company that I work for and know for a fact that the majority of the underwriters are all trying to work for our customers best interest and not trying to make sure that a customer is going to end up getting something and then that account ending up in the collections department the following month ....and I would also like to take this time out to thank every loyal customer out there


Lee

Indianapolis,
Indiana,
U.S.A.
My Question is

#7UPDATE Employee

Sat, October 08, 2005

To the person who wrote in saying that he watched an employee specifically doctor information so that he could obtain a loan through our company. As an underwriter for household, it is my job to make sure that everything that is submitted is verified or documented that it has been verified...I.E income, mortgage balances...credit balances showing on the customers credit bureau..if an agent does submit something that is different from what is showing on the credit bureau or looks suspicious, it is my job to make them fax me verification of the variance...and that verification often comes from the customers themselves....so my question is if you know that you can not either afford the loan or afford a loan of that amount then why submit documentation that basically is telling us that you can, when in fact you know that you can't or when the loan amount is reduced you call in cussing and fussing about it....basically the agents in the branch do no underwrite the loans we do and as stated before the information that we request does not come from the agents it comes from you the customer....I feel very good about the company that I work for and know for a fact that the majority of the underwriters are all trying to work for our customers best interest and not trying to make sure that a customer is going to end up getting something and then that account ending up in the collections department the following month ....and I would also like to take this time out to thank every loyal customer out there


Teresa

Brentwood,
Tennessee,
U.S.A.
I agree

#8UPDATE Employee

Thu, September 15, 2005

I agree with Erika. I have been with this company for 2 1/2 years and have worked in 3 separate Beneficial branches in Tennessee and Illinois. We have never been told to "pack" insurance on loans. You have the option of calling the employee tip line to report things like this. Packing insurance is grounds for termination, and I was also trained highly and harshly against this. Beneficial and HFC are sub prime lenders, which means we are dealing with customers that do not have great credit. Along with that comes a higher interest rate because they are very risky loans. Beneficial also offers hardship programs, that will give you reduced payments and interest rates in order to get you caught up. There are VERY few lenders out there who will do that. Most lenders will not even accept a partial payment when you get behind.


Erika

Lancaster,
Pennsylvania,
U.S.A.
I don't know who your managers were...

#9UPDATE EX-employee responds

Sun, August 21, 2005

But I was NEVER told to do any of these things. Except for the getting 2-3 applications a day, but I've been in this business for 5 years and EVERY company pushes for that. They do charge the maximum fees that are ALLOWED by law, yes. But as do many loan officers that are trying to make money. It's legal. I do agree they may get stingy with rates, but the majority of the people that come there cannot get a loan elsewhere. We were financing under 500 credit scores all the time! These people cannot get loans anywhere, and I actually was able to give a borrower with a 480 score an 8.5%! Not bad, since Beneficial doesn't rate you on your credit score, they rate you on your payment history. I never had an appraiser over value real estate. The appraisers that appraised for Beneficial were VERY conservative. In fact mine were UNDER appraising so often that I could hardly ever get a loan done that should have been do-able. Not to mention if any of the appraisers DID go crazy, the underwriters would have cut the value immediately. Maybe it's different in Illinois, but here we had NO stated/no income verification loan programs. We also had NO no-appraisal loans. You cannot simply change the amounts to pay off creditors. It is right there on their credit report what the true balance is, and the underwriters know this. We were NEVER told to pack on insurance. We were trained highly and harshly against this, repeatedly.

Reports & Rebuttal
Respond to this report!
Also a victim?
Repair Your Reputation!
//