Freya and Ollie had a major surprise to contend with over the summer – one that started as a scare. Both aged 28 and married only last year, Ollie was a freelance web designer, Freya a trainee manager with a large supermarket chain. The scare began early one warm morning in July. Freya was suddenly assailed by severe abdominal pains. Having never seen her in such agony before, a panic-stricken Ollie immediately phoned for an ambulance.
Imagine their stunned surprise when they discovered in the emergency room that there was nothing “wrong” with Freya at all. The pains were completely normal – for someone who was starting labour! Freya simply hadn’t realised she was pregnant. And it seems this condition isn't as rare as you might think – it can affect one in every 600 women.
Relief that there was no serious illness to worry about rapidly morphed into delight that they were now the parents of a healthy 7½ lb baby boy. But delight equally quickly shaded into worry: they were totally unprepared for the new arrival. Instantly, they were faced with the costs that all new parents have to confront: pushchair, baby-clothes, nappies, cot, bedding etc.
Neither of them wanted to approach the bank for additional borrowing: they’d recently taken out a car loan and a home improvement loan (they were renovating an old cottage they’d bought at auction while still living in it). They felt sure that their credit score wouldn’t meet the criteria for yet another loan. Yet they needed an injection of funds ASAP.
Suddenly, Freya had an idea: she owned a beautiful set of 18-carat gold and diamond earrings, made by Cartier in Paris in the 1990s and bequeathed to her by her eccentric but wealthy late aunt. She could raise money for baby essentials by pawning the earrings, which she had never worn. Ollie had his own lightbulb experience. He was a little sceptical about using pawnbrokers to raise cash, having heard unsettling stories about the eye-watering APRs they tended to charge.
When he began researching different options on the Web, it wasn’t long before he came across peer-to-peer lender platform Unbolted. And that’s when he and Freya changed their mind about taking out a short term loan against their valuables. Unbolted’s unbeatable, high-tech, secured asset loan model was vastly superior, beating the chest-tightening representative APRs of the pawnbrokers hands down. The latter offered loans at representative APRs of between 69% (at best) and 162.54% (at worst). Unbolted’s was just 40.3%. As the couple put it, no contest.
By collateralising an applicant’s high-value possession as security for a short term loan – in this case, Freya’s Cartier earrings – Unbolted never exposes potential customers to the intrusion and possible damage of a credit search. Creditworthiness is an irrelevance for Unbolted’s lenders; the borrower’s asset is the security.
We were able to advance a loan of £1,500 to Freya and Ollie as soon as our expert partners gauged the re-sale value of the earrings. We took control of the earrings in secure storage until Freya and Ollie repaid in full as planned within the six month loan term.
They not only have in their possession all the baby essentials their little boy (Noah) needed, but also Freya’s beautiful earrings, too.
