How to Choose Safe and Legitimate Loans Online
Despite what people might say, numerous lenders offer legitimate loans. Below is a list of the most important tips on finding safe loan companies online.
Even you might have little time to find a legitimate loan, keep in mind that competition between these companies is huge. This is a good thing for us because companies constantly improve their offers.
Do your research in detail to find the best lender for your specific situation. This is the first and an important step.
- Check their BBB accreditation
BBB (Better Business Bureau) is a nonprofit organization with information about all lenders. In other words, if you don’t find information about the lender that you thought was your best bet, stay away from them.
On the other hand, if they have a decent reputation, you should consider this option and move on to your next step.
- Check their contact details
Make sure to know all the contact details of your prospective lender. This means their email, phone number, and physical address. If they readily provide you with all of these, they are a legit loan company.
- Check fees, charges, and terms
Before signing a contract with a lender, you should get informed about all of their terms, charges, and fees. In other words, make sure to read the fine print of your contract and know all the conditions of your contract.
Then see whether you can afford to pay back all money. This is the point where you must be honest with yourself. If the amount is too high, you should better walk away and find better terms.
How to Avoid Scam Loan Companies
Now that you know how to find legit loans and safe companies online, you should also learn to avoid scam loans. There are many scam lenders, and we want to help you avoid them.
- Request for advance payment
If your potential lender asks you to pay in advance to get a loan, this is a red flag. As desperately as you need that loan, don’t fall for this.
There are many hidden details in the fine print of the contract. Probably you are not a law or finance expert, so it’s possible to skip or overlook some of them.
For this reason, make sure that you take your agreement to your lawyer before signing anything. They will interpret everything to you and make a final verdict on the loan’s legitimacy.
Identity theft victims are on the rise each year, many of them being phishing victims.
No matter how badly you need the loan, never give your sensitive personal information right away, especially not online. To avoid phishing, you should never give your credit card number, SSN, or any other sensitive information to anyone before taking all of the aforementioned steps.
Only when you are 100% sure of your prospective lender’s legitimacy can you discuss providing them with the information they need from you.
- Not asking for credit history
Every legitimate loan lender will ask about your credit history. They need to know this to make an offer to you. Your financial history is significant to lenders, and none of them will give you a loan without knowing it.
If a company doesn’t ask for your credit history, this is a sure sign of a scam. If something like this happens, cross out this lender and move on to your next option.
Be careful about loan identity theft. We wrote a full article guide on that problem. Here is our detailed guide on loan identity theft.
How ElitePersonalFinance Can Help
On our site, you can find many other useful articles with tips.
- We try to find the best option for you – the best companies and the details about their offers, such as APR, loan terms, etc.
- We try to help you fix your bad credit score by advising you on how to increase your credit score.
- We list tips on how to avoid bad credit loans.
- We give you advice on how to get a lower APR.
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