Tame My Budget 4 : Manipulate Banking Services

We have look into budgeting and saving. Clearly it is good to have sustainable budget and healthy habit for saving. But what if our financial state are already in deep trouble? What if our income barely enough to survive for the month, we are barely able to pay the 5% credit cards, we are missing on installment payment for loans, house loan and car loan? Savings? I believe that savings is the least of what in our mind right now because we are unable to find enough money to survive the expenses moreover to keep aside any savings.

I was lucky enough to purchase “Teknik Manipulasi Sistem Kewangan” e-book here in Malaysia. This one e-book truly change the way I look into my situation. The e-book is such a hotseller, the publisher even have to stop selling the e-book. Apparently, the e-book exploits ways to make use of banking system to our own good. I was unable to promote the link, due to the e-book was no more in sale. However, let me breakdown the method introduce by the e-book. I hope, my fellow readers out there, able to make use the system to get your money flow back on track.

The system introduces 2 main tools:

Overdraft (OD)

1. Overdraft is a form of loan from bank. But instead of bank releasing the full amount of loan to us, they put the cash in current account which link to the overdraft account.
2. The interest is calculated daily, based on how much money you have used out from the overdraft account. As soon as you fill up or pay back to the overdraft account, no interest will be charged.
3. Overdraft normally coupled with your other bank services such as Fixed Deposit, Home Loan or ASB Loan. The maximum value of the overdraft account depends on the value of your mortgaged on fixed deposit, home loan or ASB Loan.
4. Since OD account is mortgaging from other account, bank have low risk to maintain the OD loan, thus allowing them to provide low interest rate. For example, RHB bank OD is only BLR – 1% per annum. Refering to my BLR list, RHB is currently with 5.55% BLR. Means, its OD is only 4.55% interest per annum.
5. When you plan to take OD, please take note of the interest rate so that you can get maximum savings through this system.

Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB)

1. Here in Malaysia, we have ASB available for Bumiputera. The ASB is a form of Unit Trust investment where the government guaranteed that we will not lost any of our capital investment. The return of investment was paid as dividend and bonus by end of the year.
2. Since the last few years (as shown in table below), ASB reported return up to 8% dividend with 1% bonus. That is a total of 9% dividend paid to investors.
3. Furthermore, since the investment is guaranteed from losing capital, ASB provides us with a very low risk investment capability.
4. If you do not have access to ASB, there are still a lot of options out there. Main point for this 2nd tool is to find a medium risk investment that minimally can give us annual return more than the OD interest rate. Since OD interest rate is 4.55%, you need to find investment that minimally will give you 5% dividend.
5. If you plan to use this tool for long term, you also need to consider inflation. Malaysia’s inflation is about 4% each year. So, if you are able to get investment that provide return of 9% per year, that dividend can help to support OD interest rate and also any future money inflation.
6. For Malaysia’s Bumiputera out there, ASB will give all you need to go through with this system. Of course there are many other tools, but ASB would be the safest. Please make use ASB smartly.

Year End 31 Disember	Dividend (%)	Bonus (%)	Total (%)
2006	7.3	1.25	8.55
2007	8	1	9
2008	7	1.75	8.75

Money Management Flow (ASB – OD)
So, how do we start? The e-book introduced the flow that will give you the maximum control over your money. However, as I went though the explained process, some of the requirement is a bit too far fetch. Let me try to derive the process on my own point of view and hopefully it will be able to cover as much scenario as possible to fit your case:

Initial capital for OD

1. OD must be coupled with another account as mortgage.
2. OD value also must minimally be 6 months of your current income to allow for maximum diversity use for OD.
3. OD amount must include any credit card outstanding balance that you are currently having. Concentrate only for credit card, not on other low interest loans.
4. For example, your income is $3000 per month and you have $5000 of credit card outstanding balance. So, you need to have OD amount of $3000 x 6 months + $5000 which equal to $23,000.
5. Normally, bank would allow only 95% from your value mortgage for the OD facility. That means, to have $23,000 of OD value, you need to have $24,200 of mortgage.
6. Where can you get this lot of money? It can come from your savings, retirement saving, emergency savings or home refinancing. If you can borrow from your rich line of family also would be great as long as no interest charged. But, please do not “borrow” from along or loan shark.
7. You might also opt for ASB Loan from RHB. RHB’s ASB loan is having average interest rate of 4% per year. This will be a quick way to get the initial capital but you might have to re-visit your monthly expenses in order to cope with the monthly payment for ASB Loan.
8. You can also get personal loan, but the additional installment monthly will stress your OD usage. So please be careful on this.
   

Preparing the OD mortgage

1. Let me use ASB as the example here to clarify the detail of the process.
2. Once you have the money, deposit them to ASB. For ASB, this can be done at post office or any bank that provided ASB service.
3. Then, go to the nearest PNB branch and asked them to convert the investment from the account book to certificate. Remember, OD value is only 95% of the mortgage size. So, make sure you calculated the value of ASB certificate needed in order to get the OD value that you want to use.

Applying OD Facility

1. Once you have gotten the certificate, go to the nearest RHB bank. Go to the customer service counter and tell them that you want to take Overdraft Facility with ASB as mortgage.
2. During the application, you will be asked to surrender the ASB certificate to RHB bank. They will hold on to your certification through out the period of OD facility. However, the annual dividend of the ASB certificate value will still be calculated and deposits to your ASB account, so no need to worry about surrendering the certificate.
3. Once your application approved, you will received ATM card, checkbook and DotCom card. DotCom card is for accessing RHB online account for any online transaction needs.

Start Up with OD

1. Now that you have the OD facility bend to your needs, I do not expect you to go spend them like crazy. Remember that the OD is a tool for a better money management, not a tool for you to spend your heart out.
2. The first thing you need to do is to assess your budget. List down all those installment and monthly payment that you need to pay and include its due date.
3. One thing you need to remember, OD calculated interest daily based on the amount of money you used from the facility. That means, if you withdraw the money today, they will charge interest from today onward until payback. If you withdraw your money next 20 days, then they will calculate interest only by that time.
4. The concept is to pay up your bills as close as possible to its due date using OD facility. For example, if you due date on 20th, then pay the bills by 18th. Remember that, the later you use OD, the lesser the interest rate.
5. Pay up all your bills or installment using OD cheque or online. Using cheque, you can back dated to the due date. So, you can send out the cheque earlier but bank can only withdraw money from your OD based the cheque date. Try to avoid withdrawing money using OD ATM unless you plan to withdraw money and pay bill at the same day.
6. As for your credit cards, by its due date, pay the WHOLE outstanding balance. WHAT? The whole outstanding balance? YES, please pay the whole outstanding balance. Use OD cheque, backdated to the due date and pay the whole outstanding balance. This is the reason why you need to include all credit cards outstanding balance in you initial OD capital.
   
7. Special for credit card usage, look at the credit card statement. Look at the statement date and due date. Only use your credit card between the period of statement date until due date. Stop using the card after the due date. Once due, always pay the full outstanding amount as indicated in your statement (which consists of your last month spendings, but not current month spendings). This will ensure that no credit card retail interest will be charge to your card. Also, please never take cash advance from your credit card.
8. For your daily expenses, as much as possible, charge them to credit card. Minimize having to withdraw cash from OD to further reduce its interest. Only withdraw cash from OD when really really needed.

Manage your life with OD
Throughout the month, keep on doing these activities:

1. Pay bills and installment using OD cheque back dated to the due date
2. Always pay credit card full outstanding balance.
3. Use credit card for daily expenses
4. Withdraw cash from OD only when really needed.

Rejuvenate OD with salary
The day you received your salary, do these activities:

1. Take 30% from your income and invest in ASB.
2. Put aside some cash that you will need to use monthly in order not to withdraw cash from OD.
3. Whatever the balance, deposit back to OD to pay back the amount you have used.

Concept of OD

1. When you pay back OD using you balance income, OD might not be able to reach its original full amount. The balance is the one that will be charged with interest until the next payback.
2. Manage you expenses so that OD will not be drained minimally within the next 2 years.
3. The 30% savings will accumulated in ASB and returned with dividend by end of the year. Withdraw the dividend and payback OD. Do what ever you want with the balance dividend (shopping!!)
4. By the end of 2nd year, your dividend from ASB must be able to full pay back OD. If not, this is the first indication that your spending habit is ICU critical. Revisit your spending so that OD will not be fully drained by the time you top up with ASB yearly dividend.

Power of OD

1. You have 6 months income reservoir in case of emergency.
2. Your hard earn salary will be emphasized as ASB investment, growing more money for you.
3. You used credit card as a tool to pay your daily expenses, instead of relying on OD cash. But pay credit card by full amount so that bank will not able to charge us any interest.
4. ASB certificate will continue to get you dividend even though you mortgage them and use through OD.
5. OD interest counted daily. The later you use and the earlier you payback will drastically reduce the interest. That is why you should spend your daily expenses on credit card instead of OD cash.
6. Coupled with OD, credit card become a helping hand to your budget, rather than kill you in slow death.
7. The more savings you put in ASB, the more dividends you get end of the year. Having more dividends, you can make full payback to OD and spend the rest of the dividend till your heart content.

Diversity of OD
Here are other options that you can take up instead of the system above:

ASB initial deposit

• Own savings
• Home refinancing
• Borrow from others
• ASB Loan. Only RHB allows ASB Loan with OD facility, for now. Make sure apply ASB Loan only through RHB for the OD facility.
  
• Personal Loan. Additional ASB Loan or Personal Loan will add stress to your OD. Make sure you get the lowest interest rate. It is good to make sure the monthly payment and the tenure of loan is low. Rules of thumb, try for installment of 20% your income with 2 years tenure or 13% your income with 3 years tenure.
  

Non-ASB for OD mortgage

• Fixed Deposit
• House or land mortgage
• Gold mortgage

For non-ASB OD mortgage, you can deposit your 30% savings to other investment. But the investment must be at least 8% per annum return to maximize your dividend. Here are some examples:

• Amanah Saham Wawasan – 7% to 8% return
• Fixed Deposit – make sure the maturity period is not more than one year. However, FD normally only provide 2.5% return per annum.
• Unit Trust – depends on its performance. Public Bank Mutual Fund for example able to provide around 10% to 15% return.
• Gold investment – Gold is much better used for long term. But for annual return, it could gives between 10% to 15% depends on the diversity of gold price. I will explain more under Gold Investment topic in future.

Hope that this system can work for you. I setup a flow below on how you can roll your money across this system. By making use services from our banking institute, we can use them as tools to improve our money management. Good luck!

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Tame My Budget 2 : Monthly Budget

For those who has started to track their money flow for a month, then you may read on. For those who have not, please do so because this topic will directly focus to the very details of how you can tame your money flow. Without proper tracking, such focus will be blurred.

First, let us look at your monthly tracking. Does the variance positive? Have you manage to list down all source of money income including from credit cards, personal borrowing money, other income source aside from you main salary or even that RM50 that you found on the road on your way to work today? Focus on those list of income. Our objective is to ensure that all our income are positive income which will not affect our next month budget. Examples of positive incomes are your full time salary, part time salary or passive income. Negative incomes are credit cards, personal loan, borrow money or any other source that will require you to pay back by time. Plan to reduce from having too many negative incomes. Negative incomes are not all bad. It can also be tame if use wisely. But if you do not know how to improve on utilizing negative incomes to your benefit, target to zero out negative incomes in order for you to be more in control now and also later in future.

Prioritizing of eliminating negative incomes will base on its “compounding interest”. I will explain later in other topic to further derive the power of compounding interest. Here are my plans when I eliminated my own negative incomes:

1. Credit cards – Being an unsecured loan with 16% to 18% per annum interest, credit cards will suck up on your positive income drastically. The basic rules are to maintain only 2 credit cards and I will explain later how to choose and make fully use of your credit cards. Right now, plan to terminate as much credit cards that you should not have. My proposal is to go to bank, block your credit cards and request bank to convert your outstanding balance to term loan. Term loan normally at a range of 6% to 9% per annum interest which directly chop half of the interest for the credit cards. Bank that are, in my experience, would support such conversion including Citibank, HSBC, RHB, AmBank (MBF) and Standard Chartered. Those bank whom I knew do not offer term loan at all would be AEON and EON (if you plan to use their credit cards, I would propose not too). Another most important thing you need to know about credit cards, “NEVER EVER TAKE CASH ADVANCE....EVER”.
2. Personal loan – Personal loan is a form of secured loan, so its interest rate is much lower. Check with your bank to see if the personal loan is having compounding interest or not. Some personal loan, directly calculated the interest and adds in to your principal before determining your monthly payment. For this type of loan, no further harm it can do to you, just continue to maintain healthy monthly payment until you paid off the whole loan. For loan that introduce compounding interest to its balance, try to pay more monthly and not to skip your monthly payment. If you skip your monthly payment, the interest calculation will be higher, which means you will need to pay more. For now, plan to pay off your personal loan and do not plan to make new loan until you cleared off your current loans.
3. Overdraft accounts, car refinancing, house refinancing, mortgage (including gold) – These are some of the tools that you can use in order to get liquid cash to support your lifestyle. Since they are tools, how good or how bad these tools are depends on how you use them. Please do not plan to take up this type of income unless you know exactly how they work (I will open up topics for these type of income later). Only take up these types of loans if you plan to have capital for investment. But if you plan to use the money for spending, I highly do not recommend it.
4. Borrow money – It is classified as borrow money only when your borrower did not charge any interest. This includes borrowing money from your family, your friend or even your boss. If you “borrow” money from someone who charge interest (such as along) then that is categorized under personal loan. Borrow money is the most subtle source of negative income since there is no interest charge. However, since you are borrowing money from someone close to you, it is ethical to pay them back accordingly to what you have discussed with the borrower. If you plan to pay back by next month, please make sure you do so. If you plan to payback on monthly basic, discuss properly and make sure you do not skip any payment. Borrow money do not impact much on your budget but it have a lot to do with trust. Do not loose the trust from those who are close to you because you never know when you going to need their help for even “bigger favor” somewhere in future.

Go on and try to simulate the numbers of your source of income in the Excel file. Try to zero the usage of credit cards, and see how much negative the variance can be. It is just a simulation, so no need to think too much of it. At least, it give you some picture of how much you have to “slow down” your spending once you lost some of your income. For the sake of freaking you out, try to zero your full-time salary and see if you can live without that kind of money. Hehe.

Once you had your fun, now focus. You need to set a goal of how much your budget income should be. Fill up in the excel file with these actual income information:

1. For your main income (in my case is my full-time salary), fill up your net salary. Try to put down your average net salary. If you do not how much your employer pay you every month (duh?), consider your income as 85% from your basic salary. Do not include any month to month allowance (overtime, inconsistent allowance or bonus). This will help you to shape your budget from your main salary instead of your allowance. So, if during tough time when you do not have a good allowance, it will have the least impact to your budget.
2. For other positive income, fill it up as average as possible. If you have passive income, it tend to move up and down throughout each month. Go for the average.
3. For negative income, it is up to your own plan as what I have discussed earlier. If it is too tough for you to immediately stop using your credit cards, for example, try to plan to slowly reduce the income through your credit cards or other negative incomes from month to month. The main points is sustainable and continuous. It is good to reduce them by 10% each month rather than not to reduce them at all.

After you key-in your average income, take a look at variance. It should show a negative number now. That negative number showed how much you should reduced your spending in order to be comfortable with your planned income. Do not panic first especially if that figure is sky high. For now, just believe that you can achieve it.

Now, focus on your spending. First, let us look at Fixed Monthly Expenses. You already know how much money you need to save, so look for expenses that you can chop off. Here are some of my ideas.

Hire Purchase (Car)
As for now, I have not find any tips on how should we approach our car loan payment. Azizi Ali (Malaysia very own Money Coach), once said that a car is just a tool to get you from A to B. His idea of having healthy car loan is that the monthly payment must be lower than 15% of your net salary and the car loan must be able to fully settled within 3 years. If you are currently paying more than that, means your car loan is too heavy for your income to bear. I am sure a lot of us already overshoot this guideline. It is okay, I guess. But if you are one of those who is planning to buy car, it is good to ensure that the car payment is affordable. For those already with car loan, let us stick to the monthly payment for now.

Home Loan
Home Loan is compounding interest based on its balance loan. This means, the longer you take to pay off the loan, means the more interest you have to bear. Furthermore, since home loan is a long period commitment payment, I am sure you are hoping that the monthly payment need to be lower even though the tenure (period of payment) is extended. In order to lower the payment, you can refinance your house and look for a longer tenure and further reduce the monthly. But before you opt to this option, please look for more tips from me in regards to home loan, so that your decision can be a wiser one.

Credit cards
If you are paying 5% minimum only, you will not be able to settle your credit card payment fast. Most of the monthly payment will be drained out as finance interest. So, you need to pay a bit more than 5%. Go to this link (http://www.creditcards.com/calculators/minimum-payment.php) and use the calculator to see how long it takes to clear your outstanding balance if you only pay the minimum every month. For example, if you have RM4000 outstanding balance and you stop spending on your credit cards today, if you only pay 5% the minimum monthly, it would take you 83 month (almost 7 years) to clear off you outstanding balance. By that time, you already paid bank RM1600 interest. Imagine that, simply hand over RM1600 to bank just for the service of lending you RM4000. And what if you pay only 5% minimum but still do not stop using your credit cards?

First step, try to stop using your credit card. If cannot, try harder. Hehe. It is crucial that you do it. Then pay a fixed amount every month, which must be more than the required 5%. For example, if your outstanding balance is RM4000 and you pay a fixed amount of RM200 every month, you will be able to settle the balance within 24months only (2 years). Try out this calculator (http://www.creditcards.com/calculators/payoff.php) to simulate how much needed to pay and how long it takes to settle your credit card.

I am struggling to pay my 5% minimum, how can I pay more than that? Is this what you asked yourself now? Do you want to settle your credit card fast at the same time pay lower than 5% minimum? I would propose you to go to your bank and asked to convert your outstanding balance to term loan. You can use this calculator to simulate your term loan situation (http://auctions.com.my/Calculator.asp). For example, let say that you manage to get a term loan with only 9% interest rate. You plan to settle your credit card outstanding balance of RM4000 within 5 years. With term loan, you will only have to pay RM84 per month! What if you want to settle them within 2 years? Your monthly payment will be RM183 which is even lesser compare to the credit card simulation that I mentioned earlier. The trick is the compounding interest rate. As long as you have your credit cards eating your money at 18% interest rate, you will always need to pay more.

Insurance
Every time you need to buy insurance, asked yourself, do you really need them? There are so many types out there for Life, Personal Accident, Hospitalization and Medical Card. Each of these emergencies will definitely impact your life and source of income. So how could we live with such risk if we do not take up insurance? Insurance company willing to bear that risk for you with certain monthly payment (premium). By the time the insurance reached it matured coverage period, they will no longer cover you and your premium payment will not be return to you. So, if you take a Personal Accident insurance that cover you for 10 years with RM20,000 coverage, can you ensure that you will meet with accident somewhere within that 10 years? You have to have an accident right? If not you will lost all your premium right? So, which one is more important, not to have an accident or to loose your premium? I would like to advise you to take back some of that risk. Do not share them with insurance company unnecessarily. Of course you would need some money in case, one day, something bad happen to you. So, why not stop paying insurance company, instead put your monthly payment into savings account or investment. That way, if in future you need to use the money to support you, you have the cash reserve for you to use. If you are lucky enough not the have any bad thing happen to you, then that money can go to your children future or spend for your retirement. Look through considerably over the risk. For me, I maintained having 1 Life Insurance which joint with Unit Trust Investment so that I can ripe both benefit. I have canceled my Personal Accident (PA) and hospitalization insurance and start savings using the monthly payment. If you can not effort the monthly payment, then ask yourself if you still want to pay for the insurance or not.

Internet Provider
If you are like me who need to have a constant connection to Internet, then judge your service provider to see if it is the most value for money. Basic guide for Internet subscription: wired connection is faster, reliable and much cheaper compare to wireless. Wireless such as EDGE, 3G and 3.5G broadband is expensive compare to value per speed and most of the time is unreliable. The extra money you pay for the wireless is on its mobility. This would depends on your lifestyle. Do you need Internet while on the move? If you have the option, go for wired services instead. In Malaysia, for wired connection, you can opt for Streamyx or Time Broadband. For wireless, you can always compare between Maxis, Celcom, DiGi, P1 and U Mobile to find the best package that works for you and your coverage areas.

Satellite TV Provider
Here is Malaysia, most of home installed with Astro. We do not have any other option, either Astro or have to rely on over-the-air TV Channel. Astro packed quite a punch with it list of exciting programs to choose from. Different package comes with different programs and also different price tag. Choose wisely. If you subscript to a package which you do not watch it at least 50% of the month, then why bother paying money for them. Get Astro to change your subscription and go for those channel that you watch more frequently. Maybe I did not watch it that frequent, but just in case I want to watch them later, it is good to have what? To spend your money wisely, "Just In Case" habit is not healthy. Pay only for what you need and drop the rest.

Utility Bills (Electrical and Water)
You need to use them everyday. Can you terminate your electrics or water to save money? I don't think so. What you can do instead is to save its usage:

1. Lighting - Every time you want to switch on a light ask yourself, "Do I need too turn this on?" If your living room and dining room is next to each other without barrier wall, turn only one light from one of the room. Use fluorescent light more than incandescent light since fluorescent light use less energy. If you have smaller room, use short fluorescent light compare to long one. Fluorescent light tend to use more energy during start up. If you plan to leave a room only for less than 5 minutes, leave the light on. If it is longer than 5 minuts, switch it off. If you prefer a gloomy feeling of incandescent light, opt for energy saver bulb instead, it helps to save up to 80% energy than the conventional ones. When your family went to bed, switch off all the lights. We tend to leave the light on because we want to scare off thief (did it really work?). If someone wants to break in to your house, having light off or on does not really matter much, right. So, if you stay in a dense neighborhood, turn off all your light and rely on the street light or your neighbor's light (just hope they also not energy-saver freak like you, hehe). If you stay in a mansion in the middle of jungle, I guess you should turn on some light while in bed, just to get rid off that gloomy scary feeling (uh, spooky).
   
2. Fan - Turn on your fan only when need too. If it is a windy day, just open up the windows for that fresh breeze. When you turn on the fan, go for lower speed. Higher speed means more energy needed. If your room has high ceiling, where even the highest speed of fan will not do any good, then go for stand fan or table fan. Try to get fan that have timer so that you can set the timer to switch off the fan, for example after you went to sleep.
3. Television - It was designed to be watch, so only turn it on if you plan to watch it. I have a nag of switch on my TV if I want to watch it, and turn it off once I turn on my notebook so that I only need to focus on one appliance at a time. If you like to lay down in front of your TV and watch it while doze off, set it on sleep timer so that it will switched off once you already fall asleep.
4. Fridge and freezer - You need to turn it on all the time to keep your food fresh, right? But you can save energy by setting the temperature dial to the minimum. Both my fridge and freezer always turn down to minimum and I never have an experience of bad food in them. Even my freezer do not have even the tiniest of icicle but my food stay fresh even at lowest setting. If your food is hot, let it cool to room temperature before put them in fridge. Then do periodic clean up on your fridge and freezer and throw off all the "old" food if you do not need them. The lesser food in your fridge, the lesser energy it need to keep it cool.
5. Air condition - Try to get those with inverter to help save energy. Set it to timer so that it will turn off, for example after you go to bed. Stick to "Economy" mode if your air condition have that option. You can also turn on your fan at the same time to flow the air, this way it gives a cooler feeling without having to set your air conditioning to the lowest temperature. Remember to clean up your air conditioning monthly. Having dust clog in the filter means it have to work more to blow you more air.
6. Microwave - I am sure we tend to rely on them for a quick cook. If you have time, cook your food on stove rather than in microwave. We do tend to want everything to be fast, but if we plan our cooking time earlier and use the stove more than the microwave, we can cut some of our energy usage.
7. Washing machine - Only use your washing machine once you have full load of laundry. It will save energy and water too. Having less frequent use also help to extend your washing machine lifetime. So, try not to be too hardworking to wash your laundry daily.

Telephone
Do you have home line phone or you use mobile phone? If you can rely on mobile phone, then try not to have a home line. This phone service normally have monthly subscription fees either you use them or not. Track your monthly phone bills. If you spend more on subscription fees than your calling charge, just terminate the service. You can also save on your mobile phone bills. Take one month statement and review all your calls, sms, mms and internet data usage. Using the same style for use, simulate across other service provider. Find the lowest charge that you need to pay with your style of usage. Last 3 years, I spent around RM300 on my mobile phone bills. After I reviewed my usage, change to a more value for money service provider, I am currently having almost fixed monthly charge of only RM80. Check out between Maxis, Celcom or DiGi for the best deal. Look through prepaid and postpaid service too and I am sure there will be a better option that you can use to save on your mobile phone bills. With current option to stick with your number while changing service provider, you should not have any excuse to change to a better value service provider.