When deciding to purchase or refinance a commercial property, it is good practice to start by looking at your credit report. Lenders use the 3 major credit bureaus, Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. So it will be a good idea to pull all 3 to assess your credit report for any out dated or erroneous items that could be hurting your credit score.You will also want to clear up any negative information – if you have any derogatory items such as late payments or collection accounts then write a letter of explanation and include with your commercial mortgage loan package – do not try and hide any derogatory items, unlike residential when applying for a commercial loan, your file will be approved by a live person and not an automated system. The good thing about that is that underwriters realize people make mistakes and look favorably towards a borrower that owns up to their mistakes.Once you have your credit all situated, then the next step is to gather the necessary documentation that will be required by the lender to process your loan.
Make sure your have your two most recent tax returns- both personal and business.
Get together your 3 most recent month’s bank statements – all pages, as this will be used to verify your assets and funds to close.If you are applying to refinance your commercial mortgage loan: make sure you have your payoff statements, insurance, survey, title policy, and previous appraisal in hand, this will help streamline the refinance process.If you are applying for a purchase loan for commercial real estate, the sales contract must be active. If the contract will expire prior to the closing of your commercial real estate loan, get an extension upfront, be pro-active.If tenants occupy your properties, make sure all tenant leases are valid and that you have a complete rent roll, that matches your tenant leases.You will also want to get your accountant and attorneys on the same page with you as to provide any necessary paper work or to review the loan documents, which if they can be provided in a timely fashion, you maybe able to close you loan in less than 30 days. If you can have everything in order from the beginning you would be surprised to see how smoothly the whole loan process with move to closing.There are 4 main areas that the lenders are focused on when it comes to commercial real estate, which are credit, collateral, cash flow and income.When it comes to credit, lenders want to know that the borrower has credit depth as well as being able to handle large balances especially mortgages and it most cases commercial mortgages.The collateral, they want to make sure that if they ever have to foreclose, that they will be able to unload this property within a short period of time. As Lenders are in the business of lending money, not managing real estate.When it comes to cash flow, you need to get familiar with Debt Service Coverage (DSCR). The DSCR is a ratio used to analyze the amount of debt that can be supported by the cash flow generated from the property. Or, simply the net income generated by the property divided by the new commercial mortgage payment.In commercial mortgage lending, the DSCR is equivalent to the debt-to-income, or DTI ratio in residential lending. Whereas in residential lending, the income and expenses used in the calculation is the borrower’s, it is the exact opposite in commercial mortgage lending. The income and expenses used in calculating the DSCR ratio are derived from the commercial property. Lenders like to see at least a 1.20 ratio. What that mean is for every dollar that comes in, then 20 cents will be profit.As far as the Income, they want to know that the property can sustain itself without the assistance of the borrower. However, if the borrower can sustain both his/her personal expenses as well as the commercial property, this makes the file a very strong and should not have any problems getting approved.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Mobile Banking is a service provided by a bank or other financial institution that allows its customers to conduct financial transactions remotely using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Electronic Transaction Levy or “E-Levy” is a tax applied on transactions made on electronic or digital platforms.

ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE BANKING

Mobile banking offers numerous benefits such as ease of transaction, convenience, time-saving, managing your finances, and budgeting. Some advantages of Mobile Banking in remote areas include:

Financial Inclusion — mobile banking offers convenient and easy banking services to people in remote areas. Thus, it allows banking on the go and offers all benefits of a banking system to rural areas without the presence of a financial institution.

Accessing the bank 24/7 — Mobile banking provides ubiquitous banking services without the need to visit the bank to have access to services. This offers time to benefit and ease of transacting at a distance.

Cost-benefit — Mobile banking saves the banks the cost of building physical infrastructures (branches) and maintaining branches and staff. Also, reduced costs on the customer side since the burden of visiting the bank for services is eliminated.

Improving resilience in the face of poverty — Mobile money acts as both a savings vehicle and a means of transferring funds during times of economic or environmental shocks.

Strengthening the formal economy — For many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), opening a mobile money account can facilitate access to formal financial services. Mobile money is well placed to address the issue of informality that blights many developing economies and hampers domestic resource mobilization efforts. Mobile Money enables ease of transacting, thus increasing business profits for MSMEs.

Facilitating economic growth — Mobile money has been shown to contribute to economic growth by increasing both productivity and per capita incomes

DISADVANTAGES OF E-LEVY ON MOBILE BANKING

The design of mobile money taxation policy appears to be the antithesis of a well-designed tax system. The disadvantages include:

Inequity — Mobile money taxes as currently structured to create inequity in the tax system. As the tax is mostly borne by the poor and users of the services are subject to additional taxation (unlike bank or cash transactions), the principles of both horizontal and vertical equity in the tax system are contravened.

Uncertainty -. Uncertainty and lack of transparency over taxation systems can have a direct impact on the operations of the tax authority, increasing enforcement costs, as well as discouraging investment.

Inconvenience — The administration of mobile money transaction taxes creates an inconvenience for MMPs who must calculate and collect the tax on the revenue authority’s behalf. There is an additional inconvenience for users of the service for whom remote digital transactions become more expensive or out of reach if they revert back to cash.

Inefficiency — Badly designed mobile money taxes have been shown to have a distortionary impact on demand for mobile money services. This in turn has had negative impacts on overall tax takes, as well as impacting the attainment of national economic and development goals.

EFFECT OF MOBILE BANKING — CASE STUDIES

The decision to impose taxes on mobile bank transactions will trigger so many problems.

Ghana — According to The Fourth Estate Ghana; Although the government projects a 24% decline in transactions when the levy is finally implemented, preliminary findings published by the bank of Ghana indicate the value of mobile money transactions had dropped by 3.2 billion in December 2021, less than 2 months after the proposal to introduce E-levy.

Uganda — An e-levy of 1% introduced in 2018 has led to an overall drop in the person-to-person transaction by more than 50%, and a 24% drop in industry transactions within the same year the tax was introduced according to a report by Global system for mobile communication (GSMA).

Congo — An e-levy of 1% was introduced in 2019. The government had to reverse the tax on cash outs only due to negative results of the levy on Mobile money users such as a decline in mobile money agents (unemployment) and high-value withdrawals by people.

Other countries include Benin (5%) and Cameroun (0.2%). In all these countries, the e-levy has imposed a negative effect on the economy and people. If we want to ensure the financial inclusion of people in rural areas, we need to ensure that we encourage mobile banking by withdrawing the e-levy tax.

Reference:

https://thefourthestategh.com/2022/03/16/e-levy-this-is-what-happened-when-other-african-countries-passed-it/

Purohit, S., & Arora, R. (2021). The benefits and challenges of mobile banking at the Bottom of the pyramid. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government Vol, 27(1).

Charles G. Kpan, Jr. is an Information Technologist with over 5 years of experience in the provision of Information Technology Services and an emphasis on Web Development and Visual Branding. He’s the managing Director of CYGEC IT SOLUTIONS INC. and holds a bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology from Blue Crest University, Liberia.