You have just taken out a consumer loan or a personal loan in Belgium or the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in one of our agencies. You wonder how long after the money will be in your bank account or if you can receive it directly in cash.

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On the other hand, you would like to know from what date you will have to start paying your monthly premium.

Here is a brief article which will provide you with all the clarification on these practical questions.

Always in a current account, never in cash

For obvious security reasons, your lender will never pay you the money in cash in your hands upon signing your credit contract.

Your money is paid to you in the vast majority of cases into a current account opened with your banking establishment.

In certain cases, however, money is paid:

• from your car dealership when it comes to new car financing;
• from your notary if it concerns a mortgage loan;
• with a banking establishment if it concerns credit repurchase or credit consolidation.

After how much time ?

If it is a loan or credit in Belgium, the waiting period is two working days after signing your credit contract.

If it is a payment to be made internationally, the deadline is 3 working days after signing your credit contract in one of our agencies.

As for the response to your credit request, you get it within the day.

After how long do monthly repayments begin?

After signing your credit contract, the funds are paid to your current account within 2 to 3 days.

The lender will then ask you to start monthly repayments within the month following the payment date at the latest.

For example: If the funds are paid into your current account on April 10, you must have paid the first monthly payment no later than May 9 and so on until your credit is paid in full.

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Please note, when two monthly payments are not paid, your lending organization is required to cancel the credit contract and file it with the National Bank of Belgium.

Other practical questions?

If you have other practical questions regarding credit, do not hesitate to visit our FAQs on our website. You will find all the practical answers to your questions.

The CPE offers you unique credit assistance in Belgium. Meet our team now.

At Crédit Populaire Européen, our brokers take your consumer credit application or your mortgage loan application in several languages: we process our files in Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian!

Furthermore, we welcome you to Mons, Arlon and Luxembourg. In some cases, our brokers can even come to your home.

We have our files signed in Mons every day, in Esch-sur-Alzette on Tuesday and in Arlon all day on Friday.

Our team is available every day of the week, including weekends. We answer the phone all the time.

But did you also know: our team offers you a range of unique services: from economic and financial advice to legal assistance. We have a lawyer on staff to whom you can ask any legal questions that pose a problem to you. A simple visit to our blog will allow you to see the level of quality, regularity and timeliness of our financial advice.

At CPE, you are in the hands of a serious, competent and diligent broker! Enough to start 2014 reassured!

Our entire team wishes you a happy Christmas Eve!

The Central Personal Credit Center is a state body which is part of the National Bank of Belgium. As soon as you take out a consumer loan or a mortgage loan, you will be concerned by the role of the Central Personal Credit Office. Let’s take stock of this institution that everyone talks about but that very few really know in practice.

What is the Personal Credit Center?

The Centrale is, above all, a tool to combat over-indebtedness. It records all consumer credits and all mortgage loans which are signed by individuals as well as all payment defaults (better known as “filing”). These are loans only taken out for private purposes and therefore it does not list contracts for commercial or professional purposes. It must be consulted by credit professionals before granting a loan.

So, in practice, lenders must inform the Centrale of your identity and the credit contract as soon as it is signed. Likewise, in the event of non-payment and termination of credit, lenders must inform the Centrale which then carries out the filing.

The Missions of the Personal Credit Center

The Centrale’s essential mission is to record and make available to lenders information aimed at strengthening the means of prevention in the fight against over-indebtedness of private individuals and individuals. The recorded data is communicated by banks, insurance companies and financing companies.

What information is communicated?

The information communicated concerns all consumer credit contracts and mortgage loans concluded by persons for private purposes as well as all payment defaults.

Last recorded data

You will find the latest credit data recorded at the Personal Credit Center.

The Centrale therefore contains data on 6,236,412 people and 11,437,787 credit contracts, a slight increase compared to 2011. In 2012, 1,424,406 new credit contracts were registered, a decrease of two thirds compared to 2011. The origin of this decline lies in credit openings, of which 522,277 contracts were recorded in 2012 compared to 3.2 million the previous year. The sharp increase in 2011 was the consequence of the obligation to communicate overdraft facilities on current accounts.

In 2012, the Centrale also recorded 20% fewer new mortgage loans. This trend can undoubtedly be explained by the elimination, at the end of 2011, of state aid in favor of energy-saving investments. But with 321,261 new contracts, the 2012 level is nevertheless almost 20% above the annual average over the period 2007-2009.

The number of new loans and installment sales is down by 9% and 25% respectively. The economic crisis certainly contributes to this decrease, but for installment sales, it marks a strengthening of the annual trend that began in 2006.

Final word on the registration

After two unpaid installments, the lending organization is obliged to cancel your credit contract and proceed with your filing. Once registered, you will remain registered until you have closed the credit contract and even once your credit has been repaid, you will remain registered for 12 months. There is therefore no question of obtaining a credit during this period unless you are the owner of a property free of charge (Owner’s credit).

—”Hello, am I at the Crédit Populaire bank?”
—”Certainly sir, you have correctly formed the number of Crédit Populaire Européen, how can we be useful to you?” Find out what a credit broker is.

To begin with, everything is fine! Except that Crédit Populaire Européen is not a bank but a credit and insurance intermediary. Then, a credit intermediary is also called a credit broker.

Banks, credit institutions, credit companies, credit intermediaries, brokers: the public then gives the impression of confusing these notions which therefore cover different services.

So let’s take stock together to help you understand what’s behind the “CPE” door that you just pushed! Today we say “It’s not rocket science!”

Credit institutions / credit companies

Consumer credit can be offered by bank lenders – i.e. banks and credit institutions – and non-bank lenders – i.e. credit companies.

All these lenders must have approval from the Federal Public Service Economy for the granting of consumer credit.

Consumer credits can be distributed by bank agencies as well as by credit intermediaries, that is to say brokers and credit agents, points of sale (stores: for example in household appliances, furniture, garages etc.) and remotely (for example via the internet).

Credit institutions

Credit institutions (savings banks) are defined by legislation as companies whose activity consists of:

• receive deposits of money or other repayable funds from the public and
• to grant credits for their own account;

Credit institutions are banks, the two terms are synonymous.

Credit companies

Credit companies are lenders which are not credit institutions and which have approval from the FPS Economy to grant credit.

Differences between a bank (credit institution) and credit company

A bank offers you a whole series of financial services (current account, savings account, home banking, investment advice, tax or wealth advice, etc.) while a credit company is a company whose sole corporate purpose is to grant credits on its own account (which of course a bank also does!).

Credit intermediary / credit broker

A broker or credit intermediary – the two terms are synonymous – is neither a bank nor a credit company.

The broker or credit intermediary does not grant credit. It simply connects a customer who is seeking credit with a bank or credit company which will grant them credit.

It is therefore a…credit intermediary!

The credit broker is now responsible for finding your credit at the best rate. He will work with you to find solutions adapted to your projects under the best conditions. Simulate your credit online.

What are the benefits of contacting an intermediary rather than a bank or credit company?

There are several interests:

1. The credit intermediary helps you prepare your file and submits it for you: he is your intermediary, your representative. He puts his know-how and his relationships at your disposal;
2. The credit intermediary brings several banks or credit companies into competition and therefore. It offers you the best offer on the market for your request and taking into account your specific risk profile.
3. The credit intermediary is in contact with the public: he can get you a decision in 48 hours, which no bank or credit companies can offer you;
4. The credit intermediary advises you in advance. It offers you the product which will be likely to be accepted by a bank or a credit company. It is our duty to advise.
5. In the event of difficulties in the course of your repayments, the broker is much more responsive and pragmatic than a bank or credit company. He defends your case like your insurance broker would in the event of a house fire. The broker is truly a close partner.

Crédit Populaire Européen, established since 1996 and specializing in personal and mortgage credit, is proud of its established presence in Luxembourg. Therefore, our Luxembourg customers are invited to visit us in our agencies in Esch-sur-Alzette or Mersch.

In addition, we offer a complete range of financial products, including personal loans, mortgage loans, loan consolidations and redemptions, homeowner loans, energy loans, etc.
Also, for more details about our services. We encourage you to discover our complete catalog and our online offers.

Furthermore, with its experience in the Belgian and Luxembourg markets, our family business benefits from the recognition of its financial partners. This privileged position allows us to offer the best conditions on the market. Finally, our team of senior collaborators, competent in French, Dutch, English, Portuguese and Spanish, is ready to manage your files with expertise.

Crédit Populaire Européen Luxembourg

👉🏻 We can welcome you or our colleagues can also come if you wish:

• In Luxembourg: Mersch and Esch-sur-Alzette.
• In Belgium: in Mons, Tournai, Charleroi, Brussels, Arlon and Sprimont.

Our Agencies:

In Belgium, most companies are SMEs, that is to say Small and Medium Enterprises. When they suffer from cash flow difficulties, it is not uncommon for a request to be granted credit, over a short and specific period, to compensate for the temporary lack of liquidity. Unfortunately, many banks and brokers refuse to take out such a loan.

Focus on this subject.

Can an SME take out a loan?

An SME has the legal right to obtain a loan. Nothing prevents him from taking the necessary steps. However, few banking or credit organizations agree to grant a loan to this type of company. The financial situation of the SME is often in question. Indeed, the variation in the results of commercial activity as well as the instability of the firm’s income prevent the companies allocating the loans from having an overall idea of the state of the SME’s work.

What are the difficulties specific to SMEs?

Very often, the activity of an SME works wonderfully. On the other hand, it is not uncommon for it to temporarily lack liquidity. The one month deadline is therefore exceeded for payment of invoices and sometimes extends up to three months. This phenomenon then leads to a series of difficulties. Thus, the company finds itself obliged to make a loan request in order to remedy the various problems encountered.

How to resolve these difficulties?

Knowing that it is impossible to take out a loan as a legal entity (that is to say, as a company), another solution is then possible: request the allocation of the loan as a natural person. From then on, the loan is made by the managers or administrators of the company. However, in the majority of cases these are not employees but shareholders and also self-employed people. Consequently, some difficulties will hamper the allocation of credit.

What about credit for the self-employed?

Just like for an SME, an independent person is legally authorized to obtain a loan. However, taking out a loan is complicated. Indeed, the instability of their income as well as the variation in their financial situation cause numerous difficulties for this person such as the non-visibility of their work status by the credit broker. In addition, the deadline for payment of invoices also varies between one and three months.

At CPE, it is however possible to take out a loan as an independent person because our staff includes a specialist in this field. However, only mortgage loans are granted to the self-employed thanks to the guarantee provided by the mortgage. To do this, the self-employed person is obliged to be the owner of property free of any charge or to be a co-debtor with a person owning this type of property.

Not a day goes by in our various business locations where we do not receive a credit request from an unemployed person. Indeed, people who become unemployed are also faced with having to make major purchases and the unemployed, more than anyone else, therefore implicitly see their contributory capacity extremely limited. He, more than any other taxpayer, will therefore have difficulty paying cash for the price of a washing machine, a car or a computer: in short, to meet his basic necessities with a view to finding a job. Is it legally possible to grant a loan or credit to an unemployed person?
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A harsh reality…

When your unemployment benefit is around €1,400 and you have paid your rent, the balance with which an unemployed person must meet their needs very quickly becomes limited. Therefore, buying a basic necessity such as a car, a washing machine, a living room table, a refrigerator can prove to be a real challenge… However, finding a job requires showing up properly dressed and well-groomed for job interviews. selection, browse job offers and send application letters and a CV, tasks for which the use of a computer and a printer is essential.

Can we grant credit to an unemployed person?

What will determine the willingness of a financial organization to grant credit will be, in addition to the contributory capacity, the possibility of carrying out a seizure in the event of non-payment of monthly premiums. Belgian and Luxembourg legislators have decided to make unemployment benefits below a certain amount unseizable (except with regard to the recovery of alimony arrears). The unemployed person is therefore in some way guaranteed to keep their unemployment benefit.

This gift from the legislator, which removes responsibility from the unemployed, acts like a sword of Damocles hanging over the shoulders of the unemployed. Indeed, if, as we have explained, the unemployed person is protected from recovery of their unemployment benefits, their capacity to borrow is, by force of circumstances, extremely reduced.

Thus, very often, the unemployed will experience a refusal to their loan or credit request since the financial organization will not be able to carry out a seizure at source on their unemployment benefits in the event of non-payment of monthly premiums. .

Is there an alternative to allow the unemployed to access credit?

Regarding the installment loan

The unemployed person must obtain a guarantee, a guarantee or a guarantor if they want to obtain credit or a loan. In other words, the unemployed cannot borrow alone. He will have to find a co-signer, a co-borrower, that is to say a person who borrows with him and who must be perfectly solvent.

Regarding mortgage credit

The unemployed person who owns a house or real estate (land, building, etc.) will be able to take out a mortgage loan but on the condition of taking out a mortgage on the real estate.

This still means that the amount of the loan cannot be less than €25,000 because the costs of setting up a mortgage are so high that it would not be reasonable to take out a mortgage loan for a lower amount.

Are you looking for a job ?

Did you know that our website is full of advice to help you accomplish the major projects of your life, including finding the job you need. Consult our section on this subject: your projects, finding a job.
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The time has come for the 2014 school year to begin, and with it comes a host of additional costs. From September, our students return to school. We will have to wait until the end of the month for the academics to return to their classrooms and lecture halls.

The start of the school year is always synonymous with significant expenses and financial assistance proves useful and necessary to relieve the family budget. Fortunately, your CPE financial partner is at your side to give you a little help to ensure your children have the most comfortable return to school.

What are the additional expenses?

The cost of starting a secondary school year is estimated at nearly €750 per child. This expense relates to the purchase of a school bag, new clothes, shoes, textbooks and any expenses required by the school.

Of course the cost of going back to university is much higher. In 2014, the ordinary university fee amounts to €835. But here again the peripheral costs are numerous: rental of a kot (between €300 and €450 per month); purchase of syllabi, purchase of a small car sometimes etc…the cost of a university year can of course be quite high.

Crédit Populaire Européen offers you its credit solutions

We grant you credits and personal loans from €2,500.00.

You can therefore borrow a small amount from €2,500.00.

Examples of “back to school” credits

• Personal loan of €2,500.00. Repayable over a period of 30 months: monthly payment of €93.98 (APR 9.95%), cost of credit €319.14. Total reimbursement: €2,819.14. You can vary the repayment period: this credit is repayable over a period of 24 to 30 months.
• Personal loan of €5,000.00. Repayable over a period of 36 months: monthly payment of €160.22 (APR 9.95%), cost of credit €767.92. Total reimbursement: €5,767.92. This credit is repayable over a period of 24 to 36 months.

Use our simulator

Our website offers you numerous tools for your perfect information. Among all our services, use our simulator to get a more precise idea of your financial capacity and the credit solutions we offer you.

Our brokers are at your service to advise you

Our brokers will explain to you in person the documents you must present to us to establish your credit and will advise you on the formula best suited to your needs. Do not hesitate to call us for any information.

Do you want to take out a new loan? Whether it is a car financing, a personal loan, consumer credit or a mortgage loan. Our brokers will have to examine a series of objective criteria to assess your ability to take out a new loan. Calculation of the debt ratio online.

And above all your ability to repay it without difficulty and without altering your budget and your quality of life.

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Among the few determining criteria that we will briefly recall in this newsletter, the debt ratio will most certainly be the determining criterion.

A brief overview of the question now

What are the determining criteria for obtaining a favorable decision on your credit application?

Our brokers will examine several key criteria:

• The first criterion will be to ensure your solvency: to do this, our  brokers will verify that your professional or other income is sufficient to allow you to repay the requested credit and those that are already in progress;
• Being hired under a permanent employment contract is very important;
• You will be asked to produce your last three salary slips and your bank account statements which prove that your professional income is indeed paid into your bank account;
• You will also be asked to declare all current credit contracts;
• It will be verified that you are not registered or that the  cancellation of your registration with the National Bank of Belgium is more than a year old;
• Our brokers will analyze your debt ratio.

What is the debt ratio?

The debt ratio is the percentage that your financial commitments (debts, outstanding credits) represent in relation to your total income. It is calculated using the following formula:

Total of your debts or due dates to be repaid monthly / the total of your monthly income X 100 = ….%

For example : Mr François Castel is employed in a service company. He receives a monthly net salary of €2,750. He pays each month: €1,250 for his mortgage loan, €350 for his car financing and €278 for a personal loan.

His debt ratio therefore amounts to: Total of his monthly expenses = €1,878 / total of his professional income = 2,750 X 100 = a debt ratio of 68%

Analysis of the debt ratio

To obtain new credit, the debt ratio must evolve within a range going from 30 to 50% maximum.

If the candidate borrower does not own a home, the debt rate cannot exceed 40 %.

On the other hand, if he owns a home, the debt rate can reach 50% maximum.

In the example of Mr. François Castel, he will no longer be able to borrow because his debt ratio of 68% is much too high.

Are there alternative solutions?

Of course when a person repays several loans taken in isolation, it is always desirable to carry out a credit consolidation so that you only have one credit.

In the case of Mr François Castel, our brokers will carry out a credit consolidation as part of the mortgage credit which will allow Mr. Castel to only repay a single monthly premium which will be much less than the accumulation of the three premiums taken in isolation.

Thus, via a credit consolidation, Mr. Castel’s total premium will amount to €1,450. This represents a debt ratio of 52%, which could allow subscription. A small additional credit which will be included in the same and single credit.

Do not hesitate to contact our brokers for more information…

Do you want to deal with an unforeseen event but you don’t know what the maximum debt rate is? Whether for consumer credits, real estate loans, current credits, repurchase of credits. Or consumer credit. Cpe helps you at all times and takes your borrowing capacity into account. Depending on the financial situation, monthly net income, alimony, whether or not you have a co-borrower.
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This morning we are addressing an important aspect of your credit application: guarantees. In certain cases, the borrower will have to provide security for his credit request. Sometimes, this is the obligatory signature of your spouse or your partner. In certain cases, the guarantees presented by the borrower could prove insufficient and the credit application would then necessarily have to be accompanied by additional guarantees. In the area of guarantees: we will distinguish between real and personal security. In a second part we will deal with the assignment of debts and finally we will end with the guarantee. This trilogy of articles will give you a synthetic and complete view of the concept of guarantee in terms of credit.

The concept of guarantee

The activity of lender is of course not without risks: when the lender cannot repay its debt, the bank could incur a loss. Furthermore, it sometimes happens that a customer does not provide all the guarantees required for a loan and that it is necessary for a third person to sign alongside them (spouse, cohabitant, parents, guarantors).

The function of guarantees – also called “securities” for the lender – is to reduce the financial consequences of the risk of insolvency of a debtor customer. It allows him to recover all or part of his debt.

Legal forms and advertising

Most security interests require legal forms of creation and disclosure measures. For example, a free guarantee, that is to say, a third person who commits to your side requires the drafting of a guarantee contract separate from the credit contract. Likewise, the creation of a mortgage (real security) requires a notarial deed (authentic deed) and is registered with the Registrar of Mortgages. Failure to comply with these formalities can completely destroy the value of a security interest.

Types of guarantees

We distinguish between real security and personal security:

• Real security interests relate to one or more specific movable or immovable assets. For movable property, we generally speak of pledges and for real estate, we mainly refer to mortgages.
• Personal securities involve the engagement of a third party, a person who serves as security. These are essentially the sureties.

Match your credit application with a guarantee

A customer who has submitted a credit application may sometimes be initially refused: in this case, it may turn out that the solvency guarantees presented by the customer are insufficient.

In this case, our brokers will look for solutions with you:

• Thus, for the case of a married couple under the regime of separation of property: if one of the spouses wants to take out a loan to purchase property of their own, they may be asked to attach the signature of his husband;
• Likewise, the borrower could add the recourse of a third person as personal security.

These guarantees will be likely to fundamentally change the profile of the borrower’s file and thus can usefully promote acceptance of the credit application.

Our next part: the assignment of receivables (assignment of remuneration)