There are many online lenders who are eager to provide funding for small businesses and households. They seek to loan us money to obtain revenue through interest rates and in some cases, penalties. Loans are important and we should know how to choose the right lender. There are essential key points we need to consider:
- Privacy: Today, we should make sure that everyone respects our right to privacy. In this case, we should check the privacy policy page and read it carefully. The whole thing should make sense to us. It should mention how they will use our name and other private information, such as home address and contact numbers. We should also be careful not providing social security and credit card numbers to easily, especially if the online lender asks them too early. When we fill their forms, we should make sure that we don’t provide them with critical information. Naturally, even the most honest online lenders will need such an information down the road, but they should be able to nurture our trust. Trust is an essential factor in online-based financial cooperation, so we should also make sure that these lenders are trustworthy. There should be indications whether we could trust these lenders or not.
- Design: Website is the key to many online transactions and that’s the reason we need to closely examine the design of the lender’s website and evaluate it properly. This is comparable to evaluating a store or an office as we walk through the front door. There are a few things we should consider, such as the website will load much faster. It is also important to know, whether the website is elusive or straightforward enough. In this case, we should be able to glean direct and important information from the website. One strong sign of untrustworthy website is the presence of pop-under and pop-ups. In general, we should be sure that the lender can present themselves properly online. How lenders can represent themselves should be considered as the reflection of their good business philosophy. This could also tell us a lot about the type of lender that we should expect to work with, before we sign on the bottom line.
- Popularity and Reputation: It should be quite clear that reputation and popularity aren’t everything. However, it is quite important to prioritize on reputable lenders than those who are less known to consumers. We could visit Alexa.com to find out whether the lender has popular website and whether they get a lot of traffic. This should be a very easy thing to do. Although popularity isn’t everything, this factor should determine whether we have a viable choice and this step should be considered as rock solid common sense. In this situation, we should be able to understand more about our reputation. This should provide us with enough corporate information, including phone number, name and address. This should provide us a clear indication about the popularity of a lender.
