Should I Join A Pardner?

Pardner saving is becoming more and more popular as people look for innovative ways to meet their financial goals. The term Pardner (sometimes spelled pardna) is a Caribbean term. It is typically used by Jamaicans from the Caribbean and those with Jamaican parentage in the United Kingdom.

It is a system that has been around for quite some time and many a Caribbean home has been able to benefit from the system. This informal system allows those who may not be able to access traditional financial mechanisms to have a chance. Here we will examine the merits of this often-overlooked saving mechanism.

What Is A Traditional Pardner?

Simply put, a pardner is a type of rotating savings and credit association. The system is simple and depends on the members of the pardner knowing and trusting each other. The system can be a saving for those who take their lump sum at the end of the cycle or a loan for those who get their money upfront.

How Does The Traditional Pardner System Work?
As mentioned before the pardner system’s efficiency is in its simplicity. A group of friends or family come together to join a pardner. They decide when they will be making contributions.

Contributions are usually made monthly or weekly. It depends on the needs of the group. The person who forms the group is usually the banker.

This person collects the money from all the participants and then pays the member whose turn has rolled around to collect. Each lump sum is called a hand. The banker distributes hands for the entire pardner cycle until each member has been paid.

The members of a pardner usually select when they would want their hand, depending on their financial commitments. However, if an emergency situation comes up, one pardner member can swamp hands with another member.

What Are The Rules Of The Traditional Pardner System?

Since this system is informal, there are no rules per se. However, the banker or organiser of the pardner will tell you when your contribution is expected every week or month so that the other members of the pardner can be paid in a timely fashion. You usually pay at the end of the week or month after the members have received their salaries.

Who Does A Pardner System Help?

The pardner system was designed to help people who may not have high earning capabilities but still want to save and improve their financial situation. As such working-class people usually find pardners very helpful. They are able to send the children to university and buy their school supplies.

If they want to go on holiday, a pardner may help them afford it! They may be able to finally upgrade an appliance that has seen better times. Pardners also help persons who may not be able to access loan facilities at traditional financial institutions.

Pardners are here to stay. They provide a very valuable service to communities. There is no doubt that they have helped families improve their financial circumstances and will continue to do so way into the future.

How Is Prosperity Pardner Different?

Unlike traditional Pardners, Susus and Rotating Savings And Credit Associations (ROSCAs), we pay you a reward for using our service.

Also we are not able to do the traditional rotational weekly or monthly payout, where each person receives a turn or ‘hand’.

Here’s why. Traditional Pardners and Susus depend on long established circles of trust, such as family members or work colleagues. The reason for the deep trust element is that 1 person is responsible for holding or safeguarding the money until it is paid out to the group members.

This is in addition to the fact that some people will receive their payout before they have paid anything!

We obviously cannot do that. We want to make our service as widely available as possible, which means we will be dealing with hundreds of people who we don’t know. It would be irresponsible of us to risk your money in that way.