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The purpose of this paper is to inform readers about pervasive “predatory lending” practices in the credit card industry and to explore the limitations of the Congressional response to this problem.

National attention has been focused on illegal and unscrupulous behavior in the mortgage industry, but practices common to the credit card industry have been virtually ignored. This issue is explored through a description of the modus operandi of credit card lenders, details of regulator positions on predatory lending, and the recent Congressional response to this trend via The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009.

“Predatory lending” is a fraudulent practice that presents serious financial risks to consumers. Recent attempts to minimize those risks by Congressional statute may be inadequate. This paper identifies some of the limitations of those regulatory provisions to raise awareness of the issue.

While the response to predatory lending has been well‐intentioned, lenders are constantly findings new ways to circumvent current law and regulations. As a result, research must continue to properly investigate and address the issue.

Exploration of credit card lending practices is relevant in the context of the current economic environment. Further, investigation of the prevalence and impact of “predatory lending,” as well as the recent Congressional response, are necessary to determine if enough is being done to stymie this problem and protect consumers from continued economic marginalization.

This paper provides current information relevant to the pervasive issue of predatory credit card lending in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the evolution of Macao's gaming credit practices with reference to its promulgation of the gaming credit law after its gaming liberalization.

A qualitative approach based on in-depth interviews with casino executives, government officials and gamblers to probe their perspectives on Macao's gaming credit practices was adopted due to its underresearched nature. Documentary analysis of annual reports and court files was also used.

Despite the potential of increased revenue with more credit, the credit risk for gaming concessionaires remained under control, while VIP-rooms and junket operators have adopted more prudent policy and faced substantial challenge in credit collection. All these would lead to greater alignment with law-based credit practices.

Since gaming credit information was considered confidential, the author experienced difficulty in arranging the interviews, and the nonprobability sampling characterized by the selection bias might affect the findings.

The findings have demonstrated some major credit practices such as credit charges on credit balances and terms and conditions for repayment for different credit providers in Macao.

The different credit practices by credit providers at different levels of gaming credit have been presented in the same paper.

This paper aims to address issues of law and policy, the potential pitfalls such as fraud, conflict of law and documents discrepancies that are often encountered by the parties in usage and practice of the Letter of Credit (LC). The article has gleaned other forms of payment mechanisms in international commercial trade to demonstrate that despite the upsurge in international payment instruments, the LC has remained a viable commercial product. This article aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the law governing the LC and why it has remained resilient and a viable commercial product for many years.

The author has utilized the current version of UCP 600 (2007) and the legislation such as Brussels Convention (2000) in Europe, litigated cases and secondary data sources in writing the paper. The data generated were then evaluated taking into account the most recent legal and policy changes regarding the usage and practice of the LC in international commercial transactions. The paper straddles many issues but evaluated in a distinctive way to underscore the purpose for writing it.

The findings of the paper have demonstrated that despite a myriad of payment mechanisms as a result of innovation in international trade, the LC is still a viable commercial product. Parties will need to be knowledgeable and skilled enough to keep abreast of dynamic changes on law and policy relating to usage and practice of LCs. Short of that parties could be vulnerable to risk exigencies inherent in international trade they sought to eliminate by subscribing to the LC.

The limitations lie in realm that the paper was largely library-based and the author did not carry out extensive corroborative research studies on issues it was written on. Thus, any future work on the LC will try to corroborate issues of policy and practice and how they are internalized in commercial practice.

The paper has articulated the governing law of the LC and the context in which it is harnessed in commercial practice. It has articulated potential risk areas that the parties ought to watch out for before and during the process of harnessing the LC as a payment mechanism. The paper has demonstrated that risks inherent in international trade are now higher than in past decades because of globalization and its attendant fluid environment. The paper is relevant to banks, regulators, governments and also students because it internalizes most recent changes in the usage and practice of the LCs in international trade.

International trade affects local businesses, banks, ordinary people, national governments and it has far reaching implications for societies as whole. The LC is utilized to mitigate, if not eliminate, potential risks in international trade transactions, and it has far reaching social implications for economies to be overlooked.

The article has gleaned other forms of payment mechanisms in international commercial trade to tease out that despite the upsurge in international payment mechanisms, the LC has remained a viable commercial product. This article is a MUST read because it internalizes recent changes in the usage and practice of documentary credit which have not been addressed in its context. Even though the article has been undertaken by analysis of secondary and primary data sources, the author has done so in a distinctive way to underscore the most recent changes to the usage and practice of the LC and the purpose it was written.

Illustrates how terms of sale can influence demand for a firm's products and how a firm can model the best combination of credit policy variables. Analyses the results of a credit policy questionnaire designed specifically for sales respondents. Shows how credit policy produces organizational conflict and suboptimization when separated from the sales or marketing functions.

The study aims to assess credit risk management practices within financial institutions in Ghana. Specifically, the study compares credit risk management practices of listed banks in Ghana with Basel II (1999).

The analysis is based on data gathered from varied sources, namely, use of questionnaires, analysis of internal credit policies and procedure manuals and semi-structured interviews and discussions with credit risk managers of the selected banks in May 2007 and October 2014.

Overall, the credit risk management practices within listed banks in Ghana are in line with sound practices. The only dissimilarity, however, is the role of the board of directors in defining acceptable types of loans and maximum maturities for the various types of loans. The listed banks in Ghana are also exposed to credit risks associated with granting both corporate and small business commercial loans and the use of collaterals to mitigate their credit risk exposures.

Banks in Ghana should consider developing the skills of all their personnel and appropriately motivating those involved in the credit risk management processes to ensure that they carry out this process efficiently.

Research into credit risk management in the banking industry from the Ghanaian perspective remains scant. This study is, therefore, timely, and its findings are invaluable for the efficient management of credit risk in the banking industry. This study provides policy recommendations which will enhance shareholder value and, in this way, contribute to greater stability in the banking sector in developing countries, in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the impact student enrollment manipulations have on the allocation of state resources among higher education institutions, and is motivated by a concern that gamesmanship in accounting for student enrollments leads to a lack of accurate and transparent reporting and ultimately inequities in intrastate funding of higher education institutions. To explore this issue, we use a case study methodology to analyze a State Auditor's Office investigation of a whistle-blower's complaint that a university employee wrongfully inflated the university's student count to increase state funding for the institution. We find that while the method the employee used to inflate student enrollments was ultimately condemned, another method of enrollment manipulation with much greater funding implications was not. Further research is needed to determine the scope of funding implications for similar types of enrollment manipulations across state-funded academic institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to utilize legitimacy theory to test the association between the governance of credit unions and their social and environmental disclosure in a developing country, Kenya. A further examination of institutional pressures due to regulatory forces on the association between co-operative governance and credit union social and environmental disclosure (CSED) is performed.

Using a sample comprising of 1,272 credit union observations over the period 2008-2013, panel OLS regressions are performed to establish the association between co-operative governance and CSED. A comparison of the pre- and post-regulatory influences on co-operative governance and CSED is also performed.

The findings, which are in support of both legitimacy and institutional theories, depict a positive and significant association between co-operative governance and CSED. The significance of the co-operative governance score improves from the pre-regulation period to the post-regulation period. Other significant variables influencing the volume of CSED by credit unions in Kenya include credit union size and financial performance as measured by the return on assets.

The study examines CSED practices in a developing country and in organizations in a single sector. Further, CSED is measured using a self-constructed index with data being obtained from audited annual reports only.

The study highlights the need to develop CSED guidelines tailored for credit unions, and a focus on co-operative governance as a way of improving disclosure practices.

The study utilizes a sector-specific governance variable and a CSED index to examine the association between the two variables by credit unions in a developing country. The study also attempts to investigate the role of regulation on the association between co-operative governance and the volume of CSED.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new Islamic credit card model that is in line with Shariah principles and can be adopted as an alternative to contemporary Islamic credit card models by Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia.

This paper is theoretical in nature and mainly based on descriptive research method approach.

The overall findings indicate that the contemporary practice of Islamic credit card in Malaysia is still controversial in its design and operation. Moreover, the adoption and practice of Shariah contracts in bay’ al-inah, tawarruq and ujrah models are not in line with fundamental doctrines of Shariah and are imbued with the practice of hilah (legal trick), which allows them to circumvent the prohibition of riba. The paper indicates that Al-Muqassah model possibly has a comparative advantage in design and operation when compared with the bay’ al-inah, tawarruq or ujrah models.

The paper is limited to develop a new Shariah-compliant Islamic credit card model. The paper presents a design and defines the underlying Islamic financial contracts and their working mechanisms in the proposed model. However, it will not address other related areas like consumer perception, legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper will have direct implications on contemporary practice of Islamic credit card in Malaysia and elsewhere. The practice of Al-Muqassah model can also possibly have effects on common well-being and economic development.

The paper has relevance for Islamic financial institutions offering Islamic credit cards. The proposed model is fully in line with fundamental doctrines of Shariah and performs the key functions of an Islamic credit card.

The purpose of this chapter is to identify African financial management practices, highlight their origin and explain how they differ from their Western counterparts. The study identified indigenous African financial practices using literature review, archival sources and library research covering the five areas of Africa comprising Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa Western Africa and Southern Africa. The study found out that pre-colonial indigenous African financial management features prevalent use of trade finance, trade credit management, investment management and accounting. While there is also evidence of modification of Western financial management practices to suit African contexts, it is on the whole scarce. This is suggestive of the fact that they were in existence in the first instance. The clear conclusion is that many indigenous African financial management practices pre-dated and foreshadowed their Western counterparts. Yet, it is confounding that this has been largely lost sight of, and both scholars and financial management practitioners depict the former as inferior. There is clearly a need to remedy this situation. Educators need to focus on incorporating ethno-finance concepts into the entire curricula chain from basic to higher education. The anchor point for such curricula is Ubuntu philosophy. Financial management practitioners, on their part, need to shed notions that the indigenous practices are inferior and seek to journalise their day-to-day work experiences to build a body of documented practice.