I don't buy that their business model is designed on profiting on the misery of the poorest people in the country.
As a young adult with an unsafe family home which I couldn't live in, I was well amongst the poorest in society, well below the poverty line and used a similar high interest product from a similar company to obtain a fridge and washing machine for the flat I ended up renting in a poor area. The interest equivalent was very high over the year long terms, about 50%, however without this type of loan I would have lived without refrigeration and with the inconvenience of walking over 5kms to do my washing at the nearest laundrette for at least 6 months.
You may decide to call this interest rate exploitation, however I found it to be reasonable, easy to pay off over the year and - most importantly - a lifesaver. Financial literacy would not have saved me. I knew very well that 50% was high interest, but you simply can't access better rates when you are impoverished. What I needed was a basic level of initial funding that simply isn't available from welfare. I didn't get my guts ripped out, I got the basic essentials I couldn't obtain elsewhere, immediately, for a reasonable price markup spread out over a time period that I could actually manage with relative ease.
I agree that greater financial literacy would be of benefit to society, however its the middle classes that would benefit the most (and perhaps the victims of ramping you always see on HC, sometimes basic financial literacy makes people overconfident). However, there is much less point in teaching the impoverished how to manage the money that they don't have.
I'm not sure why you use such vitriol against this company and the people who own some of its stock. Perhaps you have a personal experience which makes you feel this way? As you can see my personal story of association with these 'low end' financial institutions is a positive one, no doubt this is partly why I'm comparably happier to associate today. Personally I find 'high-end' financial institutions such as CBA and MQG to be far less ethical, but I understand we all have different standards.
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