| I am having trouble figuring out how in the world they can make the numbers work. - The lowest possible rates I've seen for personal loans are ~9%. - From the article: over 50 years the "cumulative divorce rate of ever-married women approached 40 percent".
- 22% of divorces are caused by financial dificulty (https://www.institutedfa.com/Leading-Causes-Divorce/), so assume there is no money to get back there. So for an investor to think giving out this type of loan is better than a standard personal loan the minimum rates they could offer would be 9 / .6 (stay married) / .8 (already bankrupt) = ~18.75%. And there are all kind of unfavorable terms in this loan: - it's a bullet loan so there is no incremental income stream (at least until the divorce) - you have to track people's marital status to see when loans are due So for the best qualified people you have to charge ~18.75% to come close to breaking even on the returns from a normal personal loan at which point you start having to worry about usury laws that cap the interest that can be charged. Maybe their algorithm is just going to select for couples with high credit rating that they think will get divorced soon. But once it becomes known that getting approved for one of these loans is a strong signal of getting divorced it seems like people would shy away from them. |
~100% of couples, always and everywhere, are sure they will never get divorced and that divorce is solely for other people. Centuries of actuarial results cannot convince them otherwise, so probably this won't either.