IN THE NEWS: FNB, SAAMBOU
UPDATE #2: Cape Businessman challenges FNB’s offer to Saambou Clients
UPDATE : FNB Home Loans to refund Saambou clients…read more
Five years after Saambou shut down its curator, John Louw, announced that claims by customers against the bank would be accepted until December.
The Saambou Home Loans division has been incorrectly calculating the interest it charged on outstanding mortgages, which lead to many homes being repossessed when in fact the accounts had been in advance.
Home Loan interest is charged to the outstanding amount at the end of each month, but Saambou clients were being charged interest at the beginning of every month.
This meant that their clients were paying much higher monthly installments and taking longer to payoff their home loans.
Saambou had calculated interest rates using the old building-society method, in arrears, rather than the modern banking method, by which interest is calculated on a daily basis.
After FNB took over Saambou’s client list in May 2002 it has since begun to rectify this problem.
FNB Home Loans had acquired about 80 000 accounts, 10 000 of which were in distress and which it administered on behalf of the curator.
FNB Home Loans CEO Ed Grondel says it is impossible to say how many of those customers may have been disadvantaged due to the incorrect interest rate calculations, because every account would have to be investigated manually.
Louw said it was “surprising” that customers who thought they may have a claim against Saambou had not yet come forward, despite advertisements in the press inviting them to do so.
“We have been accepting claims for three years now, and they come in waves,” Louw said.
“We are in the process of refunding people who have a legal and valid claim.”
we alsohad a bond with saambou in 1995 until 2003,and migrated to ABSA.It paid the bond off with the price Saambou requested.
we were contacted by a lawyer called Emerald Van Zyl who has been sending us copies to fill in,up until now we have not heard anything from him,whenever we phone him he told us that they are still waiting for the court to answer.
Good Day,
My husband and I had saambou Bond, but he died 31 August 1999. I have all the documents available to do an enquiry. Because of his death and the fact that I thought only the loans that were taken over by FNB would be taken into account I have not submitted information.
How ever I would still want to know where I could send information too and if I could be assisted to this regard. My contact details are 0828473252/ 0233471238(office)
0233476703 ( Home)
Hi,i desperately need advice.
My parents had a saambou bond and they did not complete their bond because saambou disappeared.so after those many years someone says that he is the owner of that house.we do not have a titledit because we didnt complete that bond and we didnt have a choice.we have some few statements where we used to pay that bond.is there any way we can stop that person to chase us out of that house?we just found out today that we had to go to fnb homeloans.
I look forward to your reply.
Best regards
thabang
Please note: FNB can only assist clients whose bond accounts were taken over by them in 2002.