When applying for a personal loan through Latitude, you can be approved and funded in as little as 24 hours, although this may extend to 48 hours. The time it takes to process your application will vary depending on a variety of factors relating both to your personal profile and the lender you apply with.

You can use Savvy’s personal loan repayment calculator to give you a rough estimate of the cost of your loan. This tool can be used to calculate the cost of instalments based on several variables, namely different loan amounts, interest rates and loan terms. Using a calculator is a highly useful way to approach your application, as you’ll already have a clear idea of what you’re capable of repaying comfortably.

The key difference between secured and unsecured loans is that the former requires an asset to be attached as collateral, while the latter doesn’t. Secured loans reward borrowers with lower interest rates and higher borrowing power in most cases, as lenders see these as less risky with an asset to fall back on in the event of a default. Unsecured loans, however, are generally easier to obtain and are faster to process, as there’s no need to assess the suitability of their security.

By breaking down the key aspects of a range of different personal loan offers, we make it simpler for you to compare different lenders and products and make an educated decision on which is the best for you. For instance, you can quickly and easily determine which loan has the broadest borrowing range, lowest interest rates and fees (if not no-fee loans).

Generally, it’s better to select as short a loan term as you’re comfortable repaying. This is because of the way that interest is calculated: the longer your term and the more repayments made overall, the slower the time taken for your interest to decrease. Because of this, a shorter loan term will result in an overall lower interest cost, on top of fewer monthly fees being charged. However, it’s always most important to ensure that you’re confident and comfortable with your repayments, so a longer term may be required to achieve this.