Google is amongst the top companies to work for and rumors suggest that it may soon have another reason to lure more potential employees - offering personal loans at a cheaper rate.
The San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending company, Lending Club, is said to be in talks with Google to offer cheaper loans to the company's employee as a standard perk. The initiative may benefit employees to have access to extra cash without paying a lot of interest and at the same time be advantageous for Google to retain existing staff, as well as attract new talent.
Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche said that the company is currently not working with Google on such an initiative; however, he did not confirm nor deny that there are talks going on regarding an employee loan scheme. Laplanche did confirm, however, that his company is in talks with large companies to offer cheaper loans, when compared with other loan providers, as a human-resources benefit.
"The program we're putting in place gives the ability for large companies with lots of employees to make loans to their employees and use their treasury reserves, on which they are earning like one or two percent, and put them to work," said Laplanche. "At the same time, they would be offering a lower interest rate to their employees than what they're paying on their credit cards or other loans they have. It's really an HR benefit and recruiting tool."
Offering a cheaper loan may prove to be an HR benefit so long as a good employer and employee relation is maintained. Employers will have the option to deduct loan repayments directly from an employee's pay check. However, both parties should understand the implications when for any reason, the employee and employer relation is terminated, and the employee has to leave the company.
Google has not confirmed such an employee benefit initiative. However, in May this year, Google acquired a minority stake worth $125 million in Lending Club, which indicates that it should not come as a surprise if it announces such an employee benefit scheme in the future.
