CLT Loan: Marinho recommends caution before taking out a loan

Brazil Agency – The Minister of Labor and Employment, Luiz Marinho, highlighted the scope of the new Worker Credit Program in the Digital Work Card, which went live this Friday (21).

The new program promises to make it easier and cheaper to pay off loans (with deductions from salary) for more than 47 million workers with formal employment contracts (CLT) in the private sector in the country.

"At the beginning of the government, the president said that it is necessary to democratize access to credit, to reach all workers. This modality [now] is for you, the domestic worker, the salaried worker with a formal employment contract. All workers who have a formal employment contract, the rural salaried worker, even if they are self-employed. And the self-employed individual (MEI)," the minister stated in an interview on the program. The Voice of Brazil, produced by Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), on Friday night.

Caution

Despite the ease of obtaining more advantageous personal loan offers, Marinho stated that workers do not need to rush and should seek as many proposals as possible, compare them all, and only close a deal after careful analysis.  

"Be patient, only take out a loan in cases of extreme necessity, to replace an expensive debt with a cheaper one or to make a good investment that you need," he advised.

By 17:45 PM, according to data provided by the minister himself, just over 15 million loan applications had been simulated through the app and the... Digital Work Card website, which has 68 million registered workers. Of that total, 1,5 million have requested proposals from banks and approximately 1,4 contracts have already been finalized.

Understand

Created by provisional measure On the 12th, the Worker Credit Program in the Digital Work Card covers employees of the private sector with a signed work card, including domestic workers, rural workers and those hired by individual micro-entrepreneurs (MEI).

The new modality allows workers to authorize the sharing of data from eSocial, an electronic system that unifies labor information, to obtain credit with payroll deductions.

With the new program, more than 80 banks and financial institutions will be able to access the profiles of workers with formal employment contracts through eSocial, a mandatory electronic system that unifies labor, social security, and tax information from employers and employees across the country.

According to the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban), the volume of private payroll loans could triple, rising from R$39,7 billion in 2024 to more than R$120 billion this year.

Agência Brasil prepared a guide with questions and answers Regarding the new loan for CLT employees.

Real Time

With the promise that interest rates could fall to less than half of what is currently practiced, on average, the new loan for CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws) employees does not have a limit on the interest rate ceiling that banks can charge, as is the case with loans for retirees and pensioners of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS).

According to Luiz Marinho, if abuses in the charges are found, the government may adopt strict measures.

"What will determine [the interest rate] is the profile of the employer and the worker, the length of the contract, and the size of the company. We will monitor it, and if we observe abuse, it is possible, in the future, to establish a ceiling if the banks are abusing the system," he noted.