Currently, teachers and nurses struggle to obtain loans from banks and financial institutions as they have no credit history and their earnings do not fall in standard brackets. Estimates put the number of teachers at 10 million across primary, secondary and higher education and 2.5 million nurses and midwives.
“In India, many teachers and nurses find it difficult to borrow from formal financial institutions as they fall on the lower end of the pay scale. With this product, we want to make it easy for them to not only obtain loans but also advances against their earnings,” said Yogesh Keswani, co-founder, PerkFinance.
To avail these services, teachers and nurses need to refer their employers – schools, education trusts, hospitals and nursing homes, to PerkFinance on their website - PerkFinance.com, who will initiate the process to partner with the employers. The employees will then be able to apply for loans on the PerkFinance app easily. The loans are usually processed within 24 hours post verification and the repayments are deducted from their salaries. The PerkFinance app is available in 4 Indian languages other than English - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada.
Partnering with schools and hospitals enables PerkFinance to underwrite these loans for teachers and nurses thus eliminating the need to turn to informal moneylenders who often charge exorbitant interest rates. Also, since PerkFinance uses the employee-employer relationship for risk assessment, it can offer better interest rates and faster processing times. PerkFinance has partnered with more than 50+ companies across various industries which have a combined workforce of more than 2 lakh people. PerkFinance has facilitated 1000s of loans, with a focus on blue collar workers and borrowers with no prior credit history.
