Introduction
The Union of Professional Nurses and Midwives, Ghana (UPNMG) has made a wonderful announcement about their much awaited Loan Scheme. This wouldn't be the time to discuss credibility of UPNMG because that has already been done in our article "UPNMG Online Registration; Switching a Union & Joining as a newly posted Nurse", we won't really be looking into the statement "UPNMG is not credible because they don't have a bargaining certificate" either because if you are smart, you'd probably know that the bargaining certificate for every profession is just ONE and the association of the profession in question that has the highest members gets to hold and use it in negotiations. However, the items they negotiate for, is enjoyed by the whole membership of the profession and not just the members of the association who did the negotiation.
That said, lets talk about UPNMG Loans and how you can apply now.
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| UPNMG loan scheme contact numbers and emails |
Interest Rate
The loan scheme is currently pegged at a cool 11% interest per year, one of the best in the market, and surprisingly, it covers these;
- Processing fee.
- Controller charges.
- Simple Interest
How much can you take?
The amount you qualify for is dependent on your mutual fund contribution to the union. The chat below states the contribution amounts with it's respective maximum loan amounts.
Note: It takes 4 months after upgrading your contribution to qualify to take it's corresponding maximum.
What is UPNMG mutual fund?
You are already on 2 tiers of pension schemes, Tier 1 is the contribution you make to SSNIT. Tier 2 is managed by the Enterprise Trustees, and then Tier 3, the one you make to your association (as a nurse or midwife). The first two are deducted and payed on your behalf by your employer that's why it appears same on everyone's payslip.
When you join an association, they deduct an amount for your tier 3. Both GRNMA and UPNMG deduct the same amount which is GH₵50. The difference? GRNMA runs a pension scheme which means you only have access to your money when you go on retirement while UPNMG runs a mutual fund which means you have access to partial withdrawal after a set number of years (currently 5 years).
It is from this mutual fund you are able to access all other benefits like the insurance scheme, hire purchase, land scheme, loan facility, auto (car and motorbike) scheme etc. That's why the higher you pay, the more loan you can access. Read our article GRNMA vs UPNMG - The Benefits and Policies to know more about UPNMG benefits.
To increase your mutual fund contribution, CLICK HERE to download the Fund Increment form from UPNMG website and contact your regional reps to submit it.
What to Know
- To qualify for this particular scheme, one must have contributed to the union for at least FOUR (4) months consecutively.
- The loan repayment period is from six (6) months to thirty-six (36) months.
- After taking a loan, you'd have to pay two-thirds of it to qualify for another one.
You may refer to the image below for a rough estimate on how much to expect to pay on your UPNMG loan but this isn't final since "there is an amortisation that is used during loan calculation with the consideration of risk. So what you get might differ a bit from the loans calculator". Instead, contact the loan office using the means provided in the first picture of this article to get the exact calculation and other assistance.
Requirements
Applying for a UPNMG Loan is done online. You basically do it from the comfort of your home. You can even do it while on your bed after printing the loan application form, no need to raise a muscle. You therefore need virtual copies of the requirements listed below;
- You should be validated (Evident by your picture on your E-payslip account)
- Filled loan application form.
- Current payslip.
- A passport picture (You'll look cute in uniform).
- Generate a mandate number which comes with a One-Time password (OTP) from CAGD.
- National ID or Ghana Card (Pictures of Front and Back).
- Screenshot of your affordability.
Don't panic if you don't know how to get the payslip, mandate number or affordability, we'll discuss those soon.
How to Apply
First off, CLICK HERE to download the Loan Application form from UPNMG website, print the form and fill it. Then, scan the form using a scanner or a scanning app like CamScanner (i.e. using your phone).
Filling the form
There are a few things you may want to get ready. I know you can easily provide your own details so I won't talk about that. These are the other details you may have to find out;
- Reference: This is more like someone who the union can contact in case you can't be reached. You'll need the person's Legal name, Phone number(s), and Voter. ID Number.
- Loan Details: Do you really know what you are getting into? By the time you finish filling this portion, you'd know exactly how much money you are taking home, how much interest you are going to pay, how much monthly deductions you'd pay until the loan is payed off. We'll use this example to explain certain parts of this section. Let's take an example; If Nurse Gbonyo takes a loan of GH₵ 5000 from UPNMG to be paid over a year. Finding 11% of 5000: 11/100×5000=550. Therefore the interest he'll pay for the whole one year is GH₵ 550. The principal plus simple interest equals GH₵ 5550. But yet again, this is just a rough estimation and should not be considered final. Kindly contact the loan office for the exact calculation of your preferred amount.
- Net salary: This is your take home salary, it can be found at the bottom right part of your payslip.
- Loan Amount: How much money do you want? Write it in numbers here. Note that this is the exact amount you'll receive in your back account since there is no processing or commitment fees like the others do.
- Interest Per Month: In Nurse Gbonyo's example, we divide the total interest amount for the year (GH₵ 550) by 12 months to get his interest per month which is GH₵ 45.83. However, if you intend to pay the this same loan amount over 36 months (3 years) maybe, note each year incurs 11% of your loan hence it's 550 x 3 = GH₵ 1650. Dividing this by the 36 months payment period will still amount to GH₵ 45.83 each month for 36 months. In a nutshell, paying in fewer months is better.
- Affordability GHS: This can be found in your E-payslip account. It is the amount of money your employer allows other institutions to take from your net salary every month. So if you have GH₵ 600 affordability, you can't take a loan that will deduct GH₵ 700 every month.
- Installment per month GHS: This is the loan amount plus interest divided by the number of years. In Nurse Gbonyo's example, that was 5550/12 = 462.5. Therefore, Nurse Gbonyo would pay GH₵ 462.5 every month for 12 months to complete payment for his loan. If the loan period was for 2 years however, the interest would have been GH₵ 550 (1 year interest) multiplied by 2 (2 years duration). This equals GH₵ 1100. We then add this amount to the his loan amount of GH₵ 5000 to sum up to GH₵ 6,100 (the total payable amount). Divide this value by 24 months and your answer for his installment per month is GH₵ 254.16 (payed monthly for 2 years).
- Purpose of Loan: Write something short about the purpose for your loan here.
- Total collectable GHS: This is the amount you got when you added up your loan amount and interest. Nurse Gbonyo's total collectable amount is GH₵ 5,550 for one year or GH₵ 6,100 for two years.
- Loan Term (Months): Tick how long you want to take in paying your loan back.
- Mode of Payment: Select Bank transfer here since MTN Momo is no longer supported.
Sign and fill all other parts of the form before you submit, even the part that says you have received the loan. This is because you won't want to travel to sign that part when the money hits your account. Would you?
Getting requirements
There are a few things you need to do to verify you can take a CAGD loan from any institution and UPNMG is no different. In this section of the guide, we'll discuss how to download your payslip, generate mandate number and access your affordability from your E-payslip account.
It all entails logging in to your E-payslip so do that;
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| GogPayslip Dashboard |
- Downloading your payslip: Click on "My Payslip" as indicated in the image above by 1. Next, Click on the diskette button at the top of the payslip you want to download as indicated with a red square in the image below.
- Downloading or taking a screenshot of your affordability: Click on "My Affordability" as indicated with 2 in the gogPayslip dashboard image. At that screen, you should see your image and 'Validated' written underneath. If this is not the case, take a passport picture and submit it to your Human Resource Manager (HR) to upload it for you. You can click on the print button to save the page to pdf or simply take a good screenshot of the page.
- Generating a Mandate Number: This number is needed for CAGD to verify that you have really authorized an institution to make deductions from your salary. Click on "Generate Mandate Form" from the dashboard, as indicated with 3 in the image for gogPayslip dashboard. Click on "New Mandate Number" and Click "Generate" in the pop up that will appear.
- Once the number is generated, Click on the "Show" button next to it and take a screenshot of the mandate form.
- You should have received an OTP from CAGD via SMS by now, take a screenshot of that as well.
- Get all the other requirements listed above and email it to UPNMG. That's what we'll discuss next.
Submitting your documents
You wrote an email address when filling your loan application form, didn't you? From that email address, send an email to one of these email addresses depending on the part of Ghana you live.
southloans@upnmg.com or northloans@upnmg.com and then make a carbon copy to upnmgloans@gmail.com
Below is an example;
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