Unsecured Loans

Get the money you need without putting your house on the line

Unlike secured loans where your house is at risk if you don't keep up with the payments, unsecured loans don't require you to put your house on the line. You'll pay slightly more than with a secured loan, but you can still get great deals if you shop around.

Unsecured loans are ideal for anyone who doesn't own a home – or who doesn't want to sign their house over to the bank if they can't make the necessary repayments. However, because unsecured loans are more risky for lenders than secured loans, you'll usually pay a few percent more in interest – although competition is fierce, so there are plenty of decent deals out there.
You can get unsecured loans for almost any purpose – a holiday, a new car, a new hi-fi – from a variety of lenders, but the lower the amount you borrow the higher the interest rate you'll pay. In some cases the difference is dramatic: for example, Alliance Leicester loans have a headline APR of just under 8%, but if you borrow less than £3,000 the APR jumps to almost 20 percent. That's a lot of interest, especially if you're paying the loan back over several years.
Because unsecured loans are inherently risky, mainstream lenders won't touch anyone with a bad credit rating. Instead, you'll need to go to a firm that specialises in riskier loans – and that will charge a higher APR than most mainstream lenders.

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