Secured Loans

Brokers
Personal loan brokers tend to advertise very heavily on daytime television, extolling the virtues of taking out one easy debt consolidation loan. Some focus on the low monthly repayments you get with their consolidation loans, whereas others tend to focus on their flexibility, or their availability to people regardless of credit circumstances.

As with all brokers, loan broking companies have the advantage of being able to negotiate better rates by dealing with the lending banks in bulk, and of being able to hunt around for their clients to find the best deal. On the other hand, personal loan brokers are essentially middle men, and their commission always has to be taken into the deal. This might mean that you do not get as good deal as you would have done by going direct. As with any financial services product, we always recommend getting one or two quotes from brokers, and comparing these with any quote you get by going direct to a loan company.

Fiscus Finance has teamed up with a carefully selected group of personal loan brokers who we believe have a good track record in dealing with personal loan applications, without being too aggressive in their promotion strategy.

Some personal loan brokers just deal with secured loans, whereas others might focus more on re-mortgaging. Whereas the larger national personal finance brokers tend to concentrate on just one or two major products, independent personal loan brokers may offer a much wider range of financial services products.

Direct Selling
Some personal loan companies choose to take their message direct to the consumer, rather than dealing through brokers. One of the most prominent examples is Alliance & Leicester, with their ultra-annoying, (but therefore clearly very effective) "wait for it advert".

Other finance companies offering loans through direct sales channels include Goldfish and Marbles.

Note that all these companies are actually handling the loans themselves. Sometimes these companies have popular brand names, which they using to leverage people into signing up for other products. Whereas Alliance & Leicester and Marbles do actually deal with their own financial services products, companies such as Virgin, and most of the supermarkets, tend to offer their loans as a joint-venture with a financial services company.

You may well find that each banking group has its own set of lending criteria, and that if your application to one company within the same group is unsuccessful, so will be an application to any other companies in group. If, however, the other company offers different lending criteria, this should not be such a problem. Regardless of credit scoring issues, it is always very useful to know exactly which company is backing the financial services products you are selecting.

Remember that many companies are using the goodwill that they have towards their brand name in order to sell other products outside their core business area. In effect, these companies are middlemen too, although you cannot always get the best deal by going direct to the source bank, as these large companies do wield very extensive buying power. As usual, it is well worth shopping around, trying at least one loan provider in each category.