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Loan comparisons: using them effectively to find the best deals
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When searching for loans, a good place to start are price comparison sites. These site provide a comprehensive loan comparison from different providers but they do not necessarily give a complete picture. | |
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The best and most effective way of comparing loans for a better deal, is to use more than one comparison site.
Compare loans test: In true journalistic spirit, we tested 3 different loan comparison sites; moneysupermarket, gocompare and comparethemarket. The search was for a £7,000 personal loan over a repayment period of 5 years*.
Moneysupermarket returned 22 loans and the first 3 results were sponsored ones (i.e. commission bearing). The lowest non sponsored total repayment was on a HSBC personal loan of £8,591 followed by Sainbury’s at £8,609.
Gocompare returned only 5 results with Bank of Scotland and Halifax loans showing the lowest repayment of £8,536. |
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HSBC did not feature and Sainsbury’s had at repayment of £8,678 (nearly £70 more than moneysupermarket).
Comparethemarket returned 46 unsecured loans but only displayed 4 as meeting the search criteria. The lowest price loans were with Bank of Scotland and Halifax, both showing total loan repayments of £8,475 each (cheapest quotes). Interestingly these are the same personal loans as Gocompare and yet £61 cheaper.
Verdict: When looking for personal loans, using more than one comparison site is more effective for finding a better deal. As most price comparison sites have an element of commission involved with loan companies, it is no wonder that the positioning of the loans in comparisons and the quoted prices are different. Simply, putting your eggs in one basket by using one loan comparison site may not get you the best deal.
* Loan quote figures are based on search results at the time of writing
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