Margill Pacific Tour

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Last November, Margill’s CEO embarked on a three-week adventure in the Pacific.

He went to implement Margill Loan Manager and train clients in the Marshall Islands, Guam, and Papua New Guinea.

Here are a few pictures from the journey!

Marshall Islands Development Bank team

 

Nimamar Capital Limited, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

 

Pacific Islands Development Bank in Guam

 

Also, through the services of Planetair, we decided to offset the climate effect of this 20,000-mile trip by buying back around 6.15 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

”Launched by the Unisféra International Centre, Planetair was created to support individuals, businesses and organizations seeking to evaluate, reduce and offset their ecological footprint and especially their climate impact.

Planetair enables individuals, businesses and organizations to quantify their greenhouse gas emissions and determine opportunities to reduce and offset their climate impact through carbon credits. – planetair.ca”

We invite all of our clients and partners to do their part by reducing or offsetting their carbon emissions. No actions are too small.

Government of Canada’s consultation on lowering the criminal rate of interest

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This past August, the Government of Canada launched its anticipated consultation paper to seek feedback from stakeholders and vulnerable members of the public on the criminal rate of interest and the availability of high-cost installment loans often offered by alternative lenders.

While the Government of Canada’s policy goal has not resulted in a new criminal rate of interest yet, a reduction in the criminal interest rate could potentially have market-changing implications for lenders and borrowers.

To continue reading this article by Me Joyce M. Bernasek and Me Dominic Duchesne from the Osler law firm, follow this link.

CARR releases anticipated CDOR loan fallback language

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On August 3, 2022, the Canadian Alternative Reference Rate working group (CARR) published the highly anticipated recommended fallback language for loan agreements (the Recommended Language) that use the Canadian Dollar Offered Rate (CDOR) as the interest rate benchmark, together with a white paper that provides an overview of the language (the White Paper). The Recommended Language was based on language published by the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC) and the Loan Syndications & Trading Association (LSTA), both of which are related to the replacement of LIBOR with the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), which market participants will be familiar with.

To continue reading this article by Lisa Mantello and Jasmyn Lee of the Osler law firm, follow this link.

Margill’s CEO accepts 5-minute video challenge

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Margill’s CEO, Marc Gelinas, was recently put to the challenge to make a video to show most of the main features of the Margill Loan Manager software.  Knowing that the software contains  more than 600 000 lines of code, and knowing that nowadays, everything needs to be short and sweet in order to keep the viewer’s attention, the challenge was to do this video within 5 minutes.

Can he do it?  Find out if he did.


Discover Margill Loan Manager in 5 minutes
Margill Loan Manager 5-minute Challenge

Survol des régimes fédéral et québécois de protection des consommateurs de certains produits et services financiers

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Le 30 juin prochain entrera en vigueur le nouveau Cadre de protection des consommateurs de produits et de services financiers et son règlement. Dans ce bulletin, on présente certaines des règles intégrées au Cadre, sous la perspective de règles similaires applicables au Québec en matière de protection des consommateurs de services financiers.

Ce bulletin présente également certaines des autorités de supervision et de surveillance en matière de services financiers, au fédéral et au provincial (Québec). Il met en perspective leurs différentes approches de supervision et présente plusieurs des pouvoirs dont ces autorités disposent pour réaliser leur mission.

Pour en savoir davantage, vous pouvez lire le bulletin de Me Guillaume Talbot-Lachance sur le site de BLG Avocats.

On a $1000 loan at 20% interest, why is my interest not $200 for one year?

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Q: On a $1000 loan at 20% interest, why is my interest not $200 for one year?

A: This is a common question that we often get and some information is missing to answer the question so we’ll analyse this, taking into account various scenarios and how to manage this in Margill Loan Manager.

There is a misunderstanding as to the concept of “amortization”.

Here is how we get to $200 in interest on a loan. It must have ONE (1) lump sum payment at the end (one year later) of 1200 to get a balance of 0.00. So there is no amortization in this loan:

Compute to get the Results table:

Let’s look at this with bi-weekly $0.00 payments just to see the interest accrued (so 26 payments and the last payment on Jan. 1, 2023 to give exactly one year). This is Compound interest (not Simple interest), so the interest keeps on increasing:

So you get exactly 200 (+ or – a few cents due to rounding) as the interest amount.
However, when you add true payments that pay interest and principal (every 2 weeks, so 26 for a full year approximately), you are not lending 1000 for 1 year since principal gets paid back every 2 weeks, thus reducing the interest accrued.

“Compute” to get a real amortization schedule at 20% annual (APR). Notice my balance goes down so the fortnightly interest (every 2 weeks) goes down and so does the interest per period. So for an amortized loan, the interest is very far from 200 total, only about half (96.96) because of the amortization effect.

There are two ways to get the desired $200 in accrued interest for 1 year when there are true principal and interest (P&I) payments:
Method 1): Calculate the REAL interest rate
  • Desired Interest per payment: 200 / 26 = 7.69
  • Principal per payment: 1000 / 26 = 38.46
  • So 26 payments of 46.15 each (26 x 46.15 = 1199.90)
Leave the Annual Nominal Rate blank and enter the Payment of 46.15. Margill will compute the rate.

 “Compute” and notice the real interest rate (APR) is now 43.97% (APR). We are at 199.90 in interest (almost 200).

2) Use Fees, not true interest
Other option is to use Column fees (that are not computed on a daily basis but entered once and no matter what, you will have 200 in “finance costs”, not real interest). Click on Add Fees (I called them Admin fees – you can rename them to anything you want) and add 7.69 (200 / 26) in “interest” (Admin Fees here) per payment.

Here are the results. I added a few cents in Admin Fees at the end and increased my payment to get exactly 200 as my finance cost. Notice my interest rate is 0% since I am now using Column fees, not real interest.

I also invite you to consult our White Paper on interest. It explains basics and more advanced issues with interest: https://www.margill.com/en/interest-calculation-white-paper/

Margill Loan Manager: Amount Due at current date or any date to “get back on track”

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A most appreciated feature in Margill Loan Manager (MLM) is its quick access to four variables, accessible in the reports or in the Main window, that allow the user to instantly see the amount that must be paid by the Borrower to “get back on track” if one or several payments are missed, partial or late.

Variables:

  • Amount due at Current Date (For final balance = 0.00)
  • Amount due at Current Date (For final balance = original balance)
  • Amount due report End Date (For final balance = 0.00)
  • Amount due report End Date (For final balance = original balance)

Example:

  • Loan amount: 25,000
  • Principal and interest payments for 18 months
  • Regular payment should be 1487.08 with a last payment of a few cents less.

Below is the payment schedule based on contract that would yield a balance of 0.00 if full payments were made on time:

Let’s suppose payment 4 is missed and payment 5 is partial, leading a hypothetical final balance of 2731.16 (in principal, interest and maybe fees had these been added):

Borrower calls you up today January 10, 2022 to know how much he must pay to be back on track. The amount can be seen in the Main window with the appropriate variable. In this case “Amount due at Current Date (For final balance = 0.00)”. So the Borrower would have to pay 2490.25 (today) so that the final balance of 2731.16 (in the year 2023) becomes 0.00. The difference is due to interest accrued on a higher amount if the outstanding amount is paid in the future as opposed to today.

If there had been a residual value, the proper variable would have been “Amount due at Current Date (For final balance = original balance)”

If Borrower wished to know the amount due at another date than today, then a report (Record List) would have been produced to get the data with one of the two variables “Amount due report End Date”.

Or you could have gone in the loan itself, inserted a line on the date, right click > Payments > Payments Adjusted for Balance = 0.00 (or Balance = X).

 

Activate this option in Tools > Settings > System Setting (Admin…)

 

For “up to current date” calculations, it is strongly advised to use the Automatic / Overnight tasks which compute totals during the night as opposed to when launching Margill in the morning.

Important notification regarding the Apache “Log4j2” vulnerability

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Please note that Margill products have not been impacted by the Apache “Log4j2” vulnerability.

The Margill Team wishes you all a very Happy New Year 2022!