Q&A: A Loan from a Property/Asset Management Company Abroad
A Loan from a Property/Asset Management Company Abroad
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I have an investment account abroad that is managed through a brokerage company called Interactive Brokers. The company allows intentional overdrawing of the account (which is like taking a loan) and charges interest for it. My question is whether it is permitted to take such a loan for various investment purposes, or whether there is a concern here of the prohibition of interest. As I understand it, there are two grounds for being lenient:
- This is a company and not a person, so perhaps the prohibitions of interest do not apply to a loan between a person and a company.
- This is a business abroad, and “whatever separates is presumed to have come from the majority,” meaning that the business is presumably under non-Jewish control or ownership (although it is possible that some of the company’s shareholders are Jews, but even here perhaps we would say that the majority determines the whole).
Best regards,
Answer
As a rule, I tend to be very lenient in these matters, because the prohibition of interest, in its original form, certainly was not intended for our modern situation vis-à-vis companies and banks and the like. Therefore I would be lenient here based on your considerations, although there are halakhic decisors who are stringent about this.
Now that I think about it, there is another consideration: an overdraft is not exactly the ordinary form of a loan (because you decide and you take, and it is not that the lender actively gives it, but only gives permission to take), and perhaps here too the interest should be viewed as not fixed contractual interest.