Members of Cooperativa are all members of the company or organisation together with other carefully selected groups of employees from other organisations, increasing loan availability.
Loans are funded by cash from Cooperativa savers and all repayments are deducted directly from employee salaries using the cooperative platform.
Further participation in the lending pool is offered to external lenders who are interested in providing cheap loans to members of the platform.
Unlike more traditional community based lending partnerships (such as credit unions ) the Cooperativa platform is backed by a sophisticated technology platform, managing lending risk and cutting out costs and time intensive processing and paperwork of traditional credit sources to pass on the full interest benefit between employee participants.
Cooperativa offers the following services
Screening: All information required to form the cooperative is already available and pre-screened by employment within the host company itself. Further screening is applied through the use of minimum credit criteria to ensure a minimum level of financial creditworthiness of borrowers particularly for longer term loans
Eligibility: To borrow within defined limits, terms and rules (e.g. existing debt, credit scoring) are established by the cooperative. Importantly Cooperativa will have higher acceptance rates than other forms of finance.
Anonymity: All lending is anonymous, removing any sensitivity associated with requesting a direct loan from colleagues (such as closeness of relationship) or obtaining salary advances which often require manager approval.
Direct Payments: All repayments relating to loans funded by other members of the cooperative are deducted through the existing payroll infrastructure ensuring payment to cooperative savers before any other expenditure and significantly reducing the potential for default.