If you're looking for a way to pay your tuition fees, you should consider MANATI. MANATI offers student loans with low interest rates so that paying your fees isn't something to stress about.
This is made possible through unique partnerships with universities, colleges, corporates and government.
Careers Portal recently had a chat with MANATI's co-founder and CEO, Riaan Jonck to learn more about MANATI and how they came about.
How did MANATI come about?
MANATI saw a need and felt that it had to be addressed. Jonck explains:
What I realized is that the growing need for funding comes from the fact that if you look at the financial sector today, they would look at a person that they would have to fund or sign security essentially on a loan for the student.
Usually, it's the parents and guardians that approach financial institutions for loans to pay for their child's fees and their name would be on the loan as the student would have no credit record. But what happens if the parents are declined? This is where the problem comes in.
"What we're doing is we're disqualifying an academically capable student from higher education or from post school education because Mom and Dad cannot afford that loan and I just, at that stage, I thought if you think about that socio-economically, it's just absolutely wrong," says Jonck.
This is where the idea, or rather the need, for something like MANATI came from.
MANATI then set out to come up with a model where these students with no credit record could be funded. They would then look joint household income, not just the parents.
You want to create a society that can go and find a job so help provide people for the workforce.
Jonck admits that giving student loans to students with no credit record is a risk but explains that looking at the household income as a whole means that the risk is shared, and the academic institution shares this risk as well.
However, not only will students be able to access an education but the economy and workforce will also gain from it.
"We are contributing to the fabric of the socio-economic fabric of this South African society," says Jonck.
Benefits of Manati Funding
Students receiving funding through Manati enjoy fixed instalments during their studies and benefit from low-interest rates on their loans.
Manati also believes that institutions directly benefit from their funding model. Student loans provide institutions access to students from an untapped market who would not have pursued education without the loans.
Furthermore, institutions experience reduced dropout rates, as students are more likely to complete their studies when they have a financial stake in repaying the Manati loan.
