Low Interest Installment Loan Providers

When you use Google, Bing, or Yahoo! to search for installment loans, you will see many different options in the results, and the vast majority of these sites are promoting high interest (high APR) loan products that will cost you dearly over the short term, and long term. This is why borrowers and applicants must exercise caution and due diligence before entering into a loan agreement with one of these lenders - many of these companies are borderline predatory, and some are just plain aggressive legal loan sharks.

The term "installment loan" has been exploited over the last 30 years in the financial services market. Ironically, the two word phrase "installment loans" was never really meant to be used for describing a loan product - it was really just used in the financial services sector to describe a borrower's weekly or monthly periodic payments. Then came payday loans.

When the payday loan and cash advance lending products were deemed legal by United States State legislatures, everything changed. These extremely expensive lending instruments are generally set up so that the borrower has to pay back their short-term loan (usually under 300 - 500 dollars) on their next paycheck, whether that be in 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or one month maximum - NEVER for longer than a month. What happened next is the Internet applicants started searching for loans that could be paid back over a longer period of time. Term lengths such as 100 days, 2 months, 4 months, 5 months, 6 months, and even 1-3 years.

These applicants wanted to borrow much more than just a few hundred dollars too. They wanted to borrow more like $1000, $2000, $3000 dollars and pay the monies back over the longer period. They wanted to get a lower APR and have none of the ridiculous penalties and fees associated with payday loans and cash advances. So guess what they searched for on search engines? You guessed it. INSTALLMENT LOANS!

So the high-yield, high fee, high APR (350-500 APR) lenders (predators and sharks) found out a way to dupe their customers yet again. They called their notes installment loans, made them payable over an average of 3 months and still charged the stupid high rates. Very sneaky indeed.

These borrowers are looking for a personal loan (for whatever reason) with a conventional lender, with conventional loan agreements, and conventional interest rates and terms. These lenders are not that easy to find online, so I always tell my readers to look closely at the terms of the lending products each lender has published on their web site, make some phone calls, read reviews, and ask around.

Make sure that you are very careful before you sign a lending agreement with a so-called installment loan lender. That it the best advice I can give. Depending on your credit rating (FICO SCORE) and credit payment history, you should never be paying more that 14-15% APR (annual percentage rate) on any installment loan you take out.