This story could be of a future Christmas…

If you’re a more-than-moderately successful independent art dealer and you want to buy your soulmate something special for Christmas, you’ll want to push the boat out. That is exactly the situation art dealer Sean found himself in this year. His wife, Amelia, recently had a distressing experience, losing her younger sister to an aggressive illness early in the summer. Amelia, herself an accomplished classical cellist, was both grief-stricken and curiously relieved: her sister Ellie had been battling the illness for two long years and was deteriorating progressively and painfully in the final 12 months. The agony for Ellie was now over, but Amelia had lost her best friend and a large void was left behind.

Naturally, Sean was utterly determined to make Christmas ultra-special this year. He knew he couldn’t magically heal the wound left by Ellie's death, but he wanted to make the festive season memorable and joyous for Amelia by giving her a lasting token of his ongoing love for her. He had set his sights on a jaw-droppingly gorgeous antique Italian cello that made a sound capable of inducing a swoon; however, there was a problem. It was going to cost him £200,000 and he only had half the amount readily to hand.

Having approached a peer-to-peer lender last year to help finance his new gallery, Sean decided against seeking another long-term loan. There was, however, money in the pipeline: he’d had a series of very successful exhibitions lately and would soon have well over £100k flowing into his account. How to bridge the time gap?

Initially, Sean considered approaching a high-end pawnbroker. He was the proud owner of an early 20th-century treasure – a fine equine painting by the English artist Sir Alfred Munnings. However, he was dismayed at the representative APRs charged by the pawnbrokers he researched, with some of the most established names charging rates as high as 155.8% and 162.54%.

Thankfully, while Googling “secured asset loans,” he discovered peer-to-peer lender Unbolted. For this lender, a borrower’s creditworthiness is irrelevant; its pool of investors don't need it because all borrowing is secured on a collateralised asset of the borrower, not his credit rating. The process is simple and fast: Unbolted’s expert partners determine an asset’s secondary market value, whereupon the platform holds it in safe storage for the duration of the six-month term as security for the loan. The asset is either returned to the borrower upon settlement or, failing that, sold at auction.

Sean had an indicative offer of a loan a few hours after uploading an image of the artwork to the Unbolted website. After expert partners examined the painting the following day and confirmed its condition and authenticity (it had been sent via Unbolted’s next-day courier service), Sean was delighted to find the £100,000 he needed sitting in his bank account just a few hours later.

Amelia will have her majestic cello on Christmas morning, and, when his fees come in early next year, Sean will have his Munnings back. As a bonus, Unbolted loans can be settled early without penalty.

Imagine what you could have achieved by unlocking your valuables with Unbolted