Proactive information security helps minimize risks

Economic experts recommend that people need to keep personal information confidential to protect themselves from possible troubles.

Finance companies fall into a fait accompli situation

Although not a family member, Ms. LTThuy (Vinh city), because of her trust in her long-time friend, lent her ID card to buy a laptop. However, when the debt repayment schedule was not on time, the finance company made a debt reminder and discovered that the person who had been paying the debt all this time was not Ms. Thuy.

Similarly, Mr. NT Dat in Do Luong district recounted that at the end of last year, his sister's family wanted to invest in seasonal business during Tet, so they used his documents to borrow money from some financial companies. However, the business did not go as expected, and with many consumer loans at the same time, Mr. Dat's relatives could not repay the debt on time. Meanwhile, based on the loan records, the finance company staff came to the house to remind them of the debt and realized that the person using the loan was not Mr. Dat. "With my income as a worker, if I pay off this "out of the blue" debt, I will have no spare money to spend at this time. But if I don't pay, people will come to remind me of the debt and collect it. I can even be sued if I deliberately do not repay the debt. I am in a dilemma, I really don't know what to do now," Mr. Dat said sadly.

These are two cases that finance companies discovered during the process of collecting late debts. According to lawyer Tran Tuan Anh, Director of Minh Bach Law Firm, "Although this is not a form of violation of the law, the responsibility for the loan still belongs to the person whose name is on the loan. If in the case that the person borrowing documents for consumer loans is unable to repay the debt or intentionally does not repay the debt, or appropriates the lender's property, civil and even criminal responsibility will "fall on the head" of the person whose name is on the loan. As for credit providers, which are finance companies, in all of the above circumstances, they must bear great losses and impacts because, after all, even if the error arises from the customer, the credit provider must accept the risk.

Currently, many large financial companies such as FE Credit, Home Credit... have taken specific actions to improve financial knowledge for people. Illustrative photo

Lenders of documents should be careful not to lose money and get in trouble.

Dr. Can Van Luc, a finance and banking expert, affirmed that lending personal documents for consumer loans is not illegal but is very dangerous and risky. “If someone borrows your documents and then borrows recklessly, will you suddenly be in debt? This also causes conflicts between the lender and the borrower, such as debt collection from the wrong person, and the debt cannot be recovered. Even if you lend your personal information to friends and relatives and they reveal your personal information to scammers, sell it or lose it, who will be responsible for your name?”

“We must determine that lending personal documents also means that we are using our own identity to sign contracts with the lender, and take full responsibility for the loan. Therefore, we should absolutely not lend personal documents when the purpose is unclear or to do things that we ourselves do not directly do, to avoid legal risks.”

Lawyer Tran Tuan Anh issued a warning

Also in the past time, taking advantage of the open policy to facilitate consumer loans of financial companies, when only requiring customers to present personal documents such as ID cards, driver's licenses... to be lent an amount of up to tens of millions of VND, many scammers have sought to buy personal documents or find ways to "extract" other people's personal information to commit fraud and appropriation of property. Therefore, the security of personal information in general and consumer loans in particular need to be properly viewed, to protect oneself from possible troubles. Not to mention, in the case of overdue loans that are not paid and become bad debts, the outstanding debt will be updated to the Credit Information Center (CIC) system of the State Bank. At that time, those who lend personal documents will not be able to borrow other credit packages due to the "black mark" of bad debts./.