Consumers are turning away from credit cards as they get their financial houses in order and become fed up with bank’s fees that never seem to stop increasing. With credit card use waning, borrowers are now looking to other types of debt to pay for purchase they don’t have the cash to pay for including home equity lines of credit and unsecured personal loans.
If you are looking for a personal loan, you can get one from just about any bank or a number of finance companies online, but often the terms are horrible. Typically interest rates will range from 20-30% and customers will be charged a number of different fees for the privilege of borrowing at that rate. Consumers often have to pay as much as 3-5% of their principal balance as an origination fee. Ouch.
Fortunately, you can side-step banks in the borrowing process and borrow money directly from other individuals through new peer-to-peer lending service. The current most popular peer-to-peer lending service is Lending Club. Lending Club’s peer-to-peer lending marketplace allows borrowers to takeout personal loans of up to $25,000 and charges customers interest rates as low as 6.39% for borrowers with excellent credit and as high as 20% for borrowers that are higher-risk.
If you’re not sure if you qualify for a Lending Club loan, just go through the application process and they will tell you whether or not you qualify and what rate you qualify at if you qualify.
Although Lending Club is a peer-to-peer lending place and you are borrowing from individuals, the process is no different than if you would have gone to the bank. The application process only takes a few minutes and you can get one of the best interest rates on personal loans available. Lending Club offers excellent rates on personal loans compared to what you would be able to get from most banks or credit unions.
