About Us
allthelenders is an independent, impartial and reliable price comparison website for payday, short term and bad credit loans in the UK.
Our Story
The story begins back in 2012. The payday loan and short term loan market was thriving and millions of loans were being issued every year – the industry was booming.
However, it wasn’t all good news, the industry was awash with hundreds of lenders and thousands of credit brokers, all trying to get as much business they could using whatever methods they wanted. As time went on we heard of more and more bad practices happening – from both lenders and brokers – and it was clear that people were starting to suffer some severe money problems by using these types of loans.
People were starting to get taken advantage of by rogue brokers pretending to be lenders and charging people up to £70 for a loan they would never get. Brokers were dominating the search engine results so were often getting more people to their websites before the lenders could get to them, the brokers often dressed their sites up like a lenders site to fool the customer into applying with them.
People looking for a loan were simply unable to find the actual lenders, the people that lent the money – at every turn it was a broker and, in many circumstances, a rogue broker.
We saw a space in the market, what if we created a website that people could go to just to find the lenders themselves – a broker free zone? Welcome to allthelenders!
2012 – 2015
In the infancy of allthelenders, it was a tough ride. We had to find the lenders ourselves and then convince them to work with us in this unconventional way – we were essentially a directory service of payday lenders, we didn’t allow people to apply on the site and people were able to use our website completely anonymously.
However, lenders took to the idea and started to show their products on our site. We started to generate more and more traffic from search engines because we gave the user what they actually wanted – access to real lenders without having to use a broker.
Before long we had in excess of 30,000 visitors a month using allthelenders to find their next lender for a short term loan. We had started to disrupt the market.
2015 to present
We are now one of the longest-established credit brokers in this industry. In 2014 the FCA was to take over from the OFT in regulating payday lenders and big changes were announced, including a price cap and other strict regulations.
This is where the shift in the market came, lenders didn’t feel like it would be possible to operate under a price cap so many of them left. Some lenders didn’t want the extra regulation and some had made their money so they also left.
The whole industry was changing almost overnight and the landscape for the future was becoming clear, we would be operating in a highly regulated market.
It was during 2014 when we were applying to the FCA for our credit license, like every other financial firm in the UK, that we decided to change the way we work.
We have always championed the customer over our own business interests, but how could we make what we offer even more valuable? What could we do to give the customer even more?
The answer was Price Comparison. Based on the same principles we have always held, we would allow the user to choose an amount and a duration and we would start telling them how much that loan would cost from each lender we worked with.
We were the first company to offer price comparison in the UK for payday and short term loans and we are still to this day one of only very few genuine price comparison sites that are truly independent.
Now, in 2022, our core values and principles stay with us and are more important than ever. We continue to evolve and move with the industry and we’re now pleased to be able to bring you our price comparison services that allows you to find the best deal possible on your next loan.
We are constantly looking for new ways to innovate and bring our visitors the very best, authorised, lenders in the UK.
We have stood the test of time and will continue to do so. As a small business ourselves our priority will always be the borrower and we will carry on operating ethically and responsibly within our market.
allthelenders is underpinned by 3 core principles:
- Honesty
- Integrity
- Trust
We are happy to have you here with us and if you ever need to reach out to us, head over to our contact page for all the information you need.