Revealed! OJK Admits It Never Sets Borrowing Interest Limit

Illustrations (Photo: Doc. VOI)

JAKARTA - The chairman of the Financial Services Authority (OJK) Investment Alert Task Force (SWI) Tongam L. Tobing said that his party had never set an upper or lower limit on the cost of returning loan funds (interest) disbursed by online loan companies aka lenders.

"OJK has never set an upper or lower limit on credit (loans)," he said in a webinar organized by Trijaya, Friday, August 6.

According to Tongam, the amount of the interest rate is very dependent on the market mechanism that occurred at that time.

"That (interest) is left to the market," he said.

However, Wimboh Santoso's subordinate reminded that the decision to withdraw online loans is entirely in the hands of the customer.

“Many fintech lending (pinjol) provide services to them (with reasonable interest). So, these opportunities need to be taken by the community so that people can also make smart decisions and don't regret it in the future," he said.

Tongam added that the online loan application process is like an agreement that must be agreed upon by both parties. For this reason, he strongly appeals to the public so that they can first consider the risks and potentials contained therein.

"This (loan) is an agreement that we must agree on together, and the most important thing is to understand the terms first," he said.

Tongam further revealed that the existence of loans is quite needed by the community because of the ease of access to funding which formal financial institutions may not be able to fulfill.

For information, based on data released by the OJK, the amount of funding and financing that has been disbursed by lending companies to date has reached Rp221.6 trillion. This value was given to 64.8 million customers with the current outstanding amount of Rp. 23.7 trillion.