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A personal loan at 4.94%! That’s lower than
the Bank of England base rate at 5.25%!!! Eh, how is that possible?
Well it’s down to ‘social lending’. You’ll
have heard of social networking sites like MySpace and UTube. Well,
Zopa is the social networking website for people to lend and
borrow from one another to cut out those pesky, profit hungry, banks!
Zopa was formed by some of the founders of Egg and offers some exceptionally
low personal loan rates – way lower than the cheapest offered by a bank (current
lowest is
5.9% from moneybank bank a
division of Alliance and Leicester).
OK, the lowest rates are only available to
A* customers and we can only guess this means those with a super clean credit
profile. Other rates marketed on their site at the time of writing (pricing is
dynamic and fluctuates during the day depending on supply and demand) are 6.76%
(A grade customers); 8.16% (B) and 11.68% (C) so, even if your profile isn’t
squeaky clean, you may get a loan.
User feedback on our loans results suggests
the acceptance rate is notably lower with
Zopa than the banks but perhaps that it is to be expected given
it is the money of ordinary individuals being lent! For those of you fancying
an unusual investment opportunity
Zopa represents a novel opportunity if you fancy dabbling as a
lender!
LINKS:
Zopa – social lending network, rates as low as 4.94% APR
Moneyback Bank – 5.9% APR
Northern Rock at 6.5% APR
First Plus at 6.3% Variable APR
(lowest secured loan rate in UK exclusive to moneysupermarket.com users.
Suitable for large consolidation loans)
Compare over 400 secured and unsecured loans
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