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الجمعة، 25 أكتوبر 2019

Johnson Bank Mortgage Review

While Johnson Bank is relatively young (it was founded in 1970), it has a strong corporate foundation. The institution was founded by the family behind the SC Johnson brand, bringing their philanthropic attitude into the realm of financial services. Johnson-Bank

To this end, the bank puts its emphasis not on specific mortgage products, but on the idea of creating custom mortgages that meet the particular needs of its customers. The firm still offers conventional mortgages, but it also works with a variety of community groups to provide grants and access to other resources that complement traditional loans.

While Johnson Bank is a relatively small lender, it focuses on personalized experiences. This makes the organization a natural fit for borrowers who want additional support and guidance to navigate the mortgage market.

Table of Contents

Johnson Bank Mortgage Rates

Johnson Bank Mortgage Options

Johnson Bank’s provides a lending processes that is consumer-focused and aimed at making home buying simple and accessible. This can make working with the firm particularly beneficial for first-time homebuyers who want assistance throughout the lending process.

The institution offers a wide range of loan types but provides little detail on the specific qualifications and provisions of each loan on its website. Instead, Johnson Bank seems to be intent on working more closely with customers by providing basic information online and making it easy to connect to an agent who can help users identify the right loan for their needs.

With this in mind, here’s a look at the mortgage options available from Johnson Bank.

Fixed-Rate Mortgage

Johnson Bank highlights fixed-rate mortgages as one of the loan programs available for homebuyers. The lender emphasizes the loan’s stability, as going with a fixed-rate ensures that monthly payments remain the same over the life of the loan.

Adjustable-Rate Mortgage

These loans feature rates that change based on external market conditions. They are usually configured as fixed for a certain term and then change every year after the predetermined initial period. Johnson Bank emphasizes that these mortgages feature interest caps that keep rates from increasing past a certain point and lower rates.

Condo Loans

The financing process for purchasing a condo can be quite different from that of obtaining a standard home. Johnson Bank offers specialized expertise in structuring loans for condo buyers, providing insights into the larger issues that emerge with condos. In particular, this involves assessing circumstances surrounding the building and condominium association and understanding how that impacts the value of the home.

Physician and Dentist Mortgages

Physicians and dentists often choose to house their offices in their homes, creating unique cost dynamics and making certain types of properties more attractive than others. Johnson Bank offers specialized loans with specific benefits like zero down payments for medical doctors and dentists.

Affordable Mortgage Programs

The bank offers opportunities to take advantage of a wide range of loan programs that accept gift funds and grants and provide down payment insurance to make home purchase more accessible to low-income households.

Programs include Home Possible Advantage loans, Community Mortgage, Guaranteed Rural Housing, down payment grants, Wisconsin Housing, and Economic Development Authority grants, and Community Mortgage.

Johnson Bank Customer Service

The online customer experience with Johnson Bank is not what you would expect from a traditional lender. Most banks tend to either focus on the online lending process, letting you fill out an application and get quotes online or emphasize personal interactions and funnel users to branch locations.

Johnson Bank mixes these two experiences, providing a variety of web resources to help guide homebuyers through the lending process, but ultimately requiring prospective customers to speak to a loan officer.

Johnson Bank does not provide quotes or a mortgage application online. Neither does it offer further details about their loan options, requiring prospective borrowers to seek detailed information about their mortgage products and the qualification requirements for them through a bank representative. However, the lender does still provide a wide range of resources on its website to help users navigate the lending process.

Johnson Bank offers guides on a home purchase and construction, detailing what the mortgage process looks like in each situation. The lender blends video content with text guides, giving users a few options for gaining a deep understanding of the loan process.

Aside from these resources, the bank offers eight different calculators to help users evaluate their personal situation and a home financing library featuring guidance on a variety of issues pertaining to the lending process.

These resources, coupled with the company’s customer-centered approach and customized options, create a robust online experience even without the ability to complete applications online.

As a relatively small, geographically-focused lender, Johnson Bank doesn’t get a great deal of attention from major industry analysis groups. For this reason, there isn’t much online data available on their customer experience.

Nevertheless, as part of the SC Johnson brand, the bank aims to provide highly ethical, community-focused operations that emphasize corporate accountability.

Johnson Bank Grades

The Johnson Financial Group was founded in 1970, eventually evolving into a few organizations that complement and support one another, including Johnson Bank, Johnson Wealth, and Johnson Insurance. The bank is an Equal Opportunity Lender and a Member FDIC firm.

The bank’s history is centered around Wisconsin, where it is headquartered in Racine and operates many branches. Expansion into other states has been more recent.

The Better Business Bureau gives Johnson Bank a strong, A+ rating. The company is a BBB-accredited business and there have only been two customer complaints filed for its headquarters.

The bank’s reputation isn’t only strong in its home state. The Arizona Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently analyzed a variety of institutions in the state as part of a Community Reinvestment Act program. This kind of work fits naturally with Johnson Bank’s focus on improving communities, and that vision comes through in its rating.

The analysis rated the bank as outstanding overall. It received outstanding ratings for lending and investment and highly satisfactory for service.

All of this information was collected on Jan. 9, 2019.

Johnson Bank Mortgage Qualifications

Mortgage shoppers may find it difficult to pin down the exact qualifications of a given mortgage from Johnson Bank. If you’re browsing options online as a first step, you’ll quickly notice the bank doesn’t dig deep into the specific loan qualifications for its products online. Instead, the lender’s goal to be a customer- and community-focused bank means that it focuses on personal interactions with mortgage agents.

These agents will work closely with potential borrowers to gather financial details and go over the loans that are available. From there, you can get into specific qualification requirements as well as the pros and cons of how well borrowers meet various standards for loans.

To some extent, this focus on delving into qualifications later in the process is due to the variety of specialty loans and grant programs it offers, which could apply to certain borrowers.

Generally, the higher the credit score, the better the chance of securing a loan, as detailed below:

Credit Score	Quality	Ease of approval
760+	Excellent	Easy
700-759	Good	Somewhat easy
621-699	Fair	Moderate
620 and below	Poor	Somewhat difficult
n/a	No credit score	Difficult

Johnson Bank Phone Number & Additional Details

Homepage URL: https://www.johnsonbank.com/
Company Phone: 888.769.3796
Headquarters Address: 555 Main Street, Suite 400, Racine, WI 53403

The post Johnson Bank Mortgage Review appeared first on Good Financial Cents®.

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If You Pass a Driving Test, This Company Could Shave 52% Off Your Insurance

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You’re a good driver, right? You’re not a speed demon. You don’t tailgate or cut people off. Heck, you even use your turn signal like a civilized person. And — this is crazy — you actually keep your eyes on the road, not on your phone.

So why should you have to pay the same price for car insurance as a lousy, unsafe driver? It’s not right. It’s not fair!

Luckily, we found a company that thinks so, too. And if you pass its driving test, it could shave up to 52% off your car insurance bill.

With Root Insurance, the better you drive, the more money you save.

How This Driving Test Could Save You up to 52% on Car Insurance

Other insurance companies set your rates based on at least six factors: your age, gender, location, driving and credit records, and what car you drive.

Root Insurance bases your rates mostly on how well you drive. Here’s how it works:

Download the Root app to your phone, and drive like you normally would for two to three weeks. The app tracks your driving, then offers you a quote for insurance coverage based on that.

Sound scary? Think of it this way: You’re getting a chance to prove what a good driver you are. And you’ve got nothing to lose. Plus, the better you score, the less you’ll pay. This test is how Root Insurance is able to save policyholders up to 52% on auto insurance — it only insures good drivers. It won’t insure just anybody.

The driving test all happens in your smartphone. You don’t need to turn on the app or anything; it just runs in the background and tracks your speed, acceleration, braking, time of day driving and other driving metrics.

The app keeps you updated on how much time you have left. After two to three weeks, your test drive is complete, and if you qualify, you’ll get an insurance quote from Root Insurance with a recommended policy. Then you can customize the coverage to suit your needs.

Root Car Insurance Review: How One Couple Saved $196/Month

Amanda Collins, 27, and her husband both had good driving records — until one mishap.

“My husband was in an accident a year ago, and our insurance was going to charge us a lot for an accident that wasn’t his fault,” she said. Their monthly premiums for two vehicles went from $180 per month to double that — and other companies were quoting even more.

“Root doesn’t only go by past experience. They go by how you drive,” Collins said. “We saved $2,352 a year and $196 a month! Enough said!”

Want to see how much you could save? Download the Root Insurance app to get started with its quick sign up. It has a 4.7 star rating in Apple App Store, with nearly 30,000 user ratings, and 3.9 stars on Google Play, with nearly 20,000 ratings. Lots of the ratings describe huge savings.

Root Insurance is available in 29 states* and is growing fast. It’ll soon be doing business in eight more states. If it’s not available where you live, you can get notified when it becomes available in your state.

If you like your quote, Root Insurance makes it easy to switch. You don’t have to wait until your current policy expires, either — Root contacts your current insurer and tells them you’re switching.

Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He probably drives way too aggressively.

*Root Insurance is available in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Nevada. It will soon be available in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Disclaimer: Savings based on national reviews reported by actual customers. Root reserves the right to refuse to quote any individual a premium rate for the insurance advertised herein.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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UK’s largest payday lender QuickQuid to close after mounting compensation claims

QuickQuid’s parent company is closing the business down in the UK after increasing pressure from regulators and aggrieved customers

Edmund Greaves Fri, 10/25/2019 - 10:36

The firm, which accounts for a quarter of the UK’s payday lending market, will stop lending by the end of the year thanks to “regulatory uncertainty,” according to a report on the BBC news website.

The US-based owner of the lender, Enova, was attempting to arrange a deal with the financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as thousands of customer filed complaints about CashEuroNetUK, the UK-based parent company to the QuickQuid brand.

A statement from the firm reads: "Over the past several months, we worked with our UK regulator to agree upon a sustainable solution to the elevated complaints to the UK Financial Ombudsman, which would enable us to continue providing access to credit," said Enova boss David Fisher.

"While we are disappointed that we could not ultimately find a path forward, the decision to exit the UK market is the right one for Enova and our shareholders."

The news of the shut down of yet another high-profile lender comes just over a year after the collapse of Wonga after customers buried the firm in a costly mountain of complaints.

At the time of writing there is no apparent notice or information about the closure of the brand on its website.

Moneywise has contacted Quickquid for an explanation of what will happen to customers of the lender. We will update this piece if we receive a reply.

Reports from Sky News said that administration firm Grant Thornton had been lined up to handle the lender’s collapse. Moneywise contacted the firm but it is declining to comment at this time.

It is most likely that outstanding debts will be sold to other providers, as is what happened with Wonga customers that owed the firm money when it collapsed. But those customers with an outstanding claim against QuickQuid could be left in limbo with no company to pay back a compensation claim.

Consumers still looking to claim compensation may find that their settlement is not paid. Claims are usually settled in a matter of weeks but if a company goes into administration before a settlement has been reached the customer is unlikely to receive a payout.

Customers of QuickQuid are advised to keep making debt repayments as normal.

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Are banks ripping us off with such low interest rates on savings?

You want to do the right thing financially, so you are thrifty and save your money in the bank. Then come the end of the month you receive a pittance on your cash

Bruce Davis Fri, 10/25/2019 - 09:53

For those of us who can remember the last time we crashed out of something European (the ERM), rates of interest measured in tenths rather than tens of percent seem almost insulting.

Many of us ask - how can banks lend at rates which seem eye-wateringly high, yet reward savers with almost nothing? Surely the competition authorities should deal with this high street “rip off”?

The problem is this is an oversimplification of how interest on savings works. There is in fact no direct relationship between the amount banks charge for loans and the amount they pay savers in interest.

This is counter-intuitive and doesn’t make sense to most of us because we don’t understand how banks, or money for that matter, actually work. Most people think banks take in cash as savings to lend out as loans.

Peer-to-peer lenders do this (the reason they are regulated differently from banks) and, to a lesser extent, building societies lend cash deposits to borrowers directly. But banks do not.

Banks are much more complex in the way they lend money and the way they are regulated to do it. They are not simply ‘safes’ for keeping your hard-earned cash.

There are different theories about how this works in practice, but it is now accepted by most Central Banks that it is better to think of banks as creating deposits when they lend money rather than as simple ‘financial intermediaries’.

Thus, there is only an indirect connection between banks’ saving and lending rates.

The Bank of England – the UK’s Central Bank - sets the ‘Base Rate’ which is the benchmark against which both savings and lending are priced. The Bank of England has a responsibility to set a rate it believes will keep inflation on or around 2%.

If it increases the rate, the ‘cost of money’ (what the bank pays commercial banks for holding cash reserves in its accounts, and the rate at which banks will lend to each other) goes up.

The result is people tend to borrow less and save more, cooling demand in the economy which in turn cools the rate of price rises of the things we buy.

Decreasing the rates, as the Bank did during the financial crisis, makes it less attractive to save, easier to borrow, and consumers are more likely to spend and keep the economy moving.

So the problem is not that banks aren’t paying enough on savings - they are simply reflecting the ‘cost’ of money. It is that there aren’t enough options for people who want to preserve the value of their savings against inflation.

To do that you need to invest, which means taking some risk with your money because sadly, you don't get something for nothing. To get a return on your money greater than inflation, you have to take some risk.

Pension funds invest your money – exposing it to risk to seek a return bigger than inflation - because they want to make sure your pension pot will be worth something meaningful when you retire.

A capitalist system depends on prices rising - if there is no inflation, there is no investment and without investment, there is no capitalism.

So in effect what campaigners for ‘a fair deal for savers’ are asking for is essentially a universal income for savers – a.k.a. a very peculiar form of socialism.

But while capitalism rules, campaigning for people to get a better understanding of these realities and how to take sensible first steps into investing would be much more helpful.

Bruce Davis is joint managing director of Abundance Investment

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Barclays U-turns on plan to scrap Post Office cash access after major backlash

Barclays Bank has performed a U-turn on its decision to axe cash withdrawal services from Post Office branches after a backlash from customers and MPs

Edmund Greaves Fri, 10/25/2019 - 09:10

The bank initially announced its decision to scrap cash withdrawal services from Post Offices as a cost-cutting measure on 8 October.

But after a significant backlash from customers, media and parliament, the bank has now performed a 180 on the decision, and committed to the Post Office for at least the "next three years."

In a statement published on the Barclays website, Barclays Group chief executive Jes Staley says: “Barclays announced on the 8th of October that we were changing the nature of our participation in the Post Office Banking Framework going forward, and the consequence of that change was that, from the 8th of January 2020, our customers would no longer be able to withdraw cash from the Post Office using a debit card.

“Our decision, however, provoked a great deal of public and private debate. We have listened very carefully to points that have been made to us by ministers in the government, by MPs, and by interested charities and consumer advocates.

“Ultimately we have been persuaded to rethink our proposals by the argument that our full participation in the Post Office Banking Framework is crucial at this point to the viability of the Post Office network."

Parliamentary pressure

Barclays drew immediate pressure from parliament for its initial decision.

Last week, Moneywise reported a group of 124 MPs wrote a letter to the high-street bank excoriating the removal of the service.

The group, led by Welsh Labour MP Chris Elmore, accused Barclays of ‘dragging the carpet from under the feet’ of vulnerable customers.

The letter noted that of 3,312 bank branch closures since January 2015, nearly one third (481) were Barclays branches.

Mr Elmore called on the bank to “start taking their responsibility to elderly & vulnerable customers seriously.”

Yesterday, newly-appointed chair of the Treasury Committee Mel Stride MP added: “The Treasury Committee has recently called Barclays’ decision to no longer allow its customers to withdraw cash from post offices hugely disappointing. I raised this issue as a priority in my first speech in Parliament as Committee Chair today.

“Barclays decision is hugely welcome.”

Post Office service future

But wider concerns about the future of Post Office services remains. Barclays does not shy away from highlighting this despite its reversal.

Mr Staley says: “Whilst we have concerns regarding the sustainability of relying on this model in the longer term, and want to work with government and others to address the problems inherent in it, we recognise that the Post Office is a network valued by many communities in the UK today.

“So we have amended our position, and will now maintain a full service proposition in the Post Office for our customers, including cash withdrawals using a debit card, for the next three years.”

Today, a statement from the Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee published a damning verdict of the initial decision, but also highlighted the plight of Post Office services.

Rachel Reeves, chair of the BEIS committee explains: “Post offices are a crucial public service and perform a vital social role in our struggling high streets, helping to fill the gaps left by retreating banks. But our Post Office system is under threat.

“Sub-postmasters are working long hours and struggling to make a living, and the retailers running Post Offices are finding it hard to make them viable. If we want to avoid a bleak future of post-office closures, the government needs to step forward with a long-term funding commitment beyond 2021 to support the Post Office network.”

But Ms Reeves does not hold back from saying that high street banks, like Barclays, shoulder this responsibility too.

“The decision by Barclays to stop its customers accessing their own money from post offices is a petty penny-pinching move which has triggered a deserved backlash from small businesses and the public alike,” she says.

“Barclays should live up to their social responsibilities, execute a swift U-turn and dump this policy. If Barclays are in any doubt about what decision they should make, we look forward to questioning them in the coming weeks on the impact of this move for customers, small businesses and post-masters.”

It appears however, Ms Reeves will now not get the chance to cross-examine the firm over the initial decision.

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Should you pay to book a table at a restaurant – and what are your rights if you need to cancel?

Should you pay to book a table at a restaurant – and what are your rights if you need to cancel? Sue Hayward Fri, 10/25/2019 - 00:00

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