Asa’s story
Asa is a highly successful and established music producer who has worked with numerous stellar, internationally famous performers in his studio. Earlier this year, he was staring into the jaws of a cash flow crisis: balancing invoice receipts against outgoings can be a precarious business at times, even for relatively prosperous entrepreneurs like Asa.
The frustrating thing, of course, was knowing that he was due £75,000 in invoices but had to meet outgoings of £50,000. Reserves were low after a recent studio refurbishment and the purchase of some new musical instruments and recording equipment. But unless he raised money fast, rent and VAT payments would be jeopardised, along with the monthly pay of his devoted engineers and technicians.
Having recently secured a business loan for the studio revamp, Asa feared that he’d be courting summary refusal if he applied for more credit. Even the alternative finance sector looked like a no go area for him: peer-to-peer lenders were certainly distinguished by their transparency and speed in comparison to banks, but all of them would subject him to a new credit search – the very thing he wanted to avoid as it was likely to be seen by p2p lenders as a risk indicator. The last thing he needed was to end up without the credit and with a damaged credit rating.
In desultory mood, he continued scouring the Web for options, whereupon he read an online article in ThisIsMoney featuring unique peer-to-peer lender Unbolted. Hope started to stir as he read on: Unbolted never subjects its applicants to credit searches because it offers secured asset loans: a borrower’s creditworthiness is beside the point provided he can place in Unbolted’s control a high value possession as collateral for the loan. Should he fail to pay, the asset would be sold at auction; if he could replay, he’d have the asset back in his possession within six months.
Asa loved the flexibility – he could settle earlier than the full term of the loan with no penalty. Any asset he put forward would be expertly valued by Unbolted’s specialist partners. And Asa certainly had an asset he thought could be used to raise the £50k he so urgently needed.
He owned a top of the range, hand-made drum kit built to order by the prestigious Californian drum manufacturer, DW. Studded with approximately one million Swarovski crystals, each one placed on the instrument by hand, this (literally) scintillating drum kit had been used in a video and a tour for an internationally famous pop-star and had been featured in a performances on the X Factor. It was a prized possession, but it suddenly looked as though it could help Asa avoid a very sticky situation.
In the case of musical instruments, Unbolted would work with specialist auction houses (such as Ingles & Hayday and Gardiner House) to determining the item’s value in a secondary market. Once our experts had valued the drum kit, we were able to offer the £50,000 Asa was seeking within hours of it arriving at our office.
Just two months after the money was released into Asa’s account, his overdue receipts came in and he was able to repay us in full, four months earlier than the loan term. His bejewelled DW drum kit is safely back in his now-thriving studio.
