Question Trader

Have you ever read any of your credit card terms and agreements? Or if you have ever taken out a loan on a car or house you can understand how hard those documents are to read and understand. Now imagine you are an immigrant coming to America, you finally become a citizen and want to open your first line of credit. Now imagine trying to read that contract in English if it wasn’t you first language.. Exactly the same feeling you had but worse. Financial literacy in this country is low enough that you don’t need to add confusion due to translation into the equation.

Thanks to the new Obama-Approved Credit Card Reform Act of 2009, English as a second language (ESL) English Language Learners (ELL) as well as other English-Speaking Americans will hopefully begin to understand the terms of any financial contractual obligation a little more in-depth. However, one critical element that is missing is the mandate to offer that loan document, terms and conditions in the “loane’s” or customer’s native language. While this seems like a lot of work for any company large corporations should have the availability of resources to easily translate all of their contracts to any language. This would not only be a customer service/loyalty incentive, it would also help people better understand their contractual financial obligations and hopefully participate more in the traditional American Banking System.