When Wu Ke heard that the Chai brothers' businesses consisted of pawnshops, personal loans, and real estate, she understood what was going on. None of those three industries was easy to operate.
Leaving the other two aside for now, personal loans alone were difficult to run legally. The biggest problem was that a considerable number of borrowers were likely to be deadbeats. Otherwise, if all the borrowers were quality clients, why would they come to borrow at high interest from you instead of taking out low-interest loans from banks?
Of course, the banks played a part in this as well. But no matter how you looked at it, quality clients were extremely rare among the people who borrowed from personal loan companies. For genuine personal loan companies, borrowers defaulting on their payments was practically an everyday occurrence.
When it came time to collect, things were manageable if the borrower still had some sense of responsibility. But recovering debts from deadbeats was no easy task, so illegal methods might be used. For that reason alone, without connections, it was difficult to keep a personal loan business running for long, let alone expand it.
As for the other two, pawnshops were closely tied to personal loans, while there was no need to say much about the real estate business. In short, without a powerful background, anyone involved in all three industries should not be surprised to end up being eaten alive by others.
Thinking of this, Wu Ke asked in puzzlement, "That doesn't seem right. If that's the case, shouldn't he be working on his connections right now? How does he still have the time to hold an exchange event?"
Zhu Dafu smiled. "Xiao Ke, don't forget—who among the people who can afford to play with antiques these days isn't wealthy? Some