Heaptalk, Jakarta — Indonesia’s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending startup, AdaKami, delivered the latest progress regarding current issues of its customers who committed suicide due to debt collection problems that exceeded the amount borrowed on this platform.
According to the company, the management of AdaKami is still investigating to discover the identity of a suspected customer who committed suicide due to receiving a terror message from the company’s debt collector (DC). Moreover, the company revealed that the investigation process regarding victims could be carried out until the needed data collection has been completed, including customers’ full names, ID card numbers, and phone number information, based on the applicable procedures of enforcing the KYC process for AdaKami users.
As is known, since this information was spread to the public three weeks ago, the company has not been able to discover the victims of the investigation. For this reason, this startup has also involved law enforcement officials for further analysis.
“AdaKami is continuing to carry out investigations more deeply and has fulfilled a summons from the National Police Criminal Investigation Unit, Directorate of Cyber Crime, regarding the internal investigation that has been carried out to obtain additional information. Furthermore, the authorities will continue this process following the applicable law in the country,” Co-Founder and CEO of AdaKami, Bernardino Moningka Vega, affirmed.
As part of the company’s responsibility to provide maximum service to its customers, AdaKami has also received several complaints. For this reason, company management continues to adjust the billing operational and monitoring processes to mitigate SOP violations.
The loan interest follows the applicable regulations
During the press conference (10/06), the Indonesian Joint Funding Fintech Association (AFPI) ensured that the interest rate stipulated by AdaKami company has followed the existing code of ethics in the P2P lending sector.
“Based on the further investigation outcome that the association has performed, the implementation of AdaKami’s loan interest calculation does not violate the existing policy in the country,” The Executive Director of AFPI, Kuseryansyah.
However, AFPI encourages the AdaKami team to review the products offered with interest calculations adjusted to the customer’s tenor period. As is well known, AFPI has set interest rate limits for fintech companies by providing a maximum interest rate of 0.4% per day for short-term loans, such as multipurpose products (cash loans). Meanwhile, long-term productive loans, such as MSMEs, are subject to loan fees of around 0.3% – 0.6% per day or approximately 12% – 24% per year.
“If loan fees exceed 0.4% per day for short-term loans, they have violated the industry code of conduct. Once again, we emphasize that AFPI ensures that all members comply with applicable industry regulations, including interest rate and collection processes,” affirmed Kuseryansyah.
In response to this issue, AdaKami’s CEO, usually called Dino, explained several high-cost components, such as marketing costs for advertising, technology costs to strengthen platform security, and insurance costs to mitigate risks. Nevertheless, he emphasized that the stipulated interest rate has fulfilled these details and complied with the association’s policy.
