When you’ve decided to freelance as a creative marketing designer, you suddenly discover just how expensive it is to equip yourself with a powerful Mac computer and all the software needed to get your technical artistry up and running. This is just what Jessica discovered when she decided to end three months of unemployment and use her lifetime’s skills in marketing to go freelance.
For Jessica, however, raising the funds to buy her equipment wasn’t going to be easy. Her redundancy money had coincided with the ending of a five-year relationship and the payout she received was swallowed in buying a new flat. She needed to work and was sure she could bring in a good income once she got started; but as a novice solo entrepreneur, she knew that she had little in the way of a track record to satisfy the creditworthiness requirements of prospective lenders. Catch 22 was upon her: to demonstrate a solid track record for borrowing, who needed to start her freelance work. But to start her freelance work, she need to borrow.
Jessica considered asking her brother, a successful lawyer, for assistance. But the two weren’t on the best of terms and, after much agonising, she decided she’d be wisest not to approach him. Estimating that she needed around £3,500 to get that Mac Pro (plus the software) and begin working from her home studio, she considered approaching a pawnbroker: her late grandmother had left her a beautiful and rather grand natural pearl necklace.
But it was while she was Googling for nearby pawnbrokers that she came across a news article featuring peer-to-peer lender platform Unbolted. In it, co-founder Rito Halder was quoted as saying:
“We set up Unbolted because we want to challenge the way people can access credit through the out-dated pawn industry and other secured lenders. We’ll do that by being transparent, offering fairer terms, cheaper rates and a convenient, easy-to-use online service that puts consumers firmly in control of their borrowing. Would-be borrowers can apply for secured loans – at market leading rates – against anything from gold to fine art, antique cars to grand pianos, simply by uploading a picture of their item to Unbolted’s website.”
Immediately (and excitedly) she studied the Unbolted website. And she was very glad that she did; Unbolted’s cutting-edge technology-enabled peer-to-peer online model strips out many of the costs associated with lending and borrowing and ensures its customers pay substantially lower rates than pawnbrokers (or larger lenders) can provide
Every month, Unbolted publishes the representative APRs pawnbrokers quote on their websites. With Unbolted having a representative APR of 40.3%, it’s offers a vastly better deal than its pawn competitors, whose representative APRs range from 65% (at best) to as much as 162.54%.
Jessica needed no further persuading. She approached Unbolted, uploading a photo of her natural pearl necklace online and using the platform’s secure courier service to deliver it for evaluation the next day. She ended up with her Apple Mac – and we didn’t put her through a credit search (her necklace was collateralised and held by us as security for her loan).
Six months later, Jessica was bringing in a better income than she’d ever achieved as a salaried marketing creative. And she was re-united with her grandmother’s necklace, too.
