Smarter Loans Personal Loan Review (2024)

Did you know that over 60% of Canadians have taken out a personal loan? Whether it's to patch a hole in your finances, seize an investment opportunity or deal with an unexpected bill, personal loans can be a useful tool in running your household. But with so many different lenders across Canada, how do you find the best deal and verify that the deal you have found is legit?

Smarter Loans is a great tool for finding the best loans for Canadian consumers. In this review, we will take you through how their personal loans tool works, what its advantages and disadvantages are and show you how to get started.

Our Smarter Loans personal loans review

Smarter Loans is a well-established loan and financial comparison website in Canada, which allows consumers to access a wide variety of lenders and helps curate deals in order to suit individual needs and profiles. Smarter Loans has an intuitive, easy-to-use website which allows consumers to adjust many variables in order to find a loan which best suits their specific financial situation.

Smarter Loans has an abundance of educational resources available about loans of all kinds on the website and detailed profiles of lenders that aim to give the consumer peace of mind when entering into a loan deal.

What is a personal loan?

A personal loan, or a consumer loan, allows an individual to borrow money for a personal need. This could be to finance a home renovation, pay for a holiday, upgrade a boat, cover an unexpected medical bill, pay a fine or almost anything else. Loans can be secured or unsecured.

A borrower receives money in a lump sum and agrees to pay it back in instalments over a typical period of 6 to 60 months. These types of loans can often be approved in under 24 hours. Personal loans are offered by traditional lenders like banks and credit unions, and alternative lenders including online platforms, payday lenders, pawnshops, or private lenders.

The lender will typically pay out the agreed sum you are borrowing straight away. You will begin repaying this debt (usually) in monthly instalments. Each of those instalments pays a portion of the principal (the amount you borrowed) and interest.

What is Smarter Loans?

Smarter Loans is a Canada-based comparison site and educational resource that focuses on finding consumers the best loan rates and providers available. It was founded in 2016 by Rafael Rositsan (Co-Founder & CEO) and Vlad Sherbatov (Co-Founder & President) and is based in Toronto, Ontario.

Since being created Smarter Loans has become Canada's largest financial and loan directory. They help over 40,000 Canadians each month find the best possible loan deals. Smarter Loans differs from other loan sites in Canada. What is unique about Smarter Loans is that it takes a full inventory of its customers' financial situation, scans a network of over 60 lenders, and then presents pre-qualified loan offers based on the collected information. This means that the loans and recommendations they offer are tailored to your specific financial situation.

What is Smarter Loans' address?

Smarter Loans HQ is in Toronto, the address of the main office is :

What is the Smarter Loans website?

Applying for a loan, managing your payments and contacting customer service can all be done through the Smarter Loans website found at www.smarter.loans

How to contact Smarter Loans?

You can either contact Smarter loans through their website (as mentioned above) by email or by phone.

How does Smarter Loans help borrowers?

Smarter Loans helps borrowers by giving them a single place to find out all the loan options, and obtain the loan they need in a fast and safe way from Canada’s top lenders. Smarter Loans builds a financial profile of them so that they can offer the most relevant lenders with the best deals. Smarter Loans also offers educational resources in that its customers be up-to-date and informed about the deals available from leading lenders in Canada.

One of the favourite features for many Canadians is the variety of loans accessible through smarter loans, including:

• Personal loans
• Small business loans
• Home equity loans
• Mortgages
• Reverse mortgages
• Auto loans
• And much more.

Borrowers can browse the Smarter Loans video library on YouTube and social media to learn more about how different loan types work, or to research lenders and their products. In addition, Smarter Loans is deeply involved in helping the entire lending industry to progress forward in Canada by participating in industry events and leading research in the Canadian lending field.

We have laid out our top four features of Smarter Loans in the table below and explained why we think they are useful.

What types of personal loans can you get from Smarter Loans?

Smarter Loans offers a variety of personal loans to suit individual needs and circumstances. We have laid out the types of personal loans offered by Smarter Loans in the table below:

How to get a quote from Smarter Loans for a personal loan?

To get quotes from Smarter loans head to their website and hit the Personal Loan button. This will take you to a questionnaire about your personal financial situation, which you will fill out in order to get the most relevant quotes for you.

This questionnaire will ask you why you are borrowing the money, about your current income, your financial history and whether you own your home. This enables Smarter Loans to choose which lenders are best suited to offer the best value interest rates and loan repayment terms.

Smarter Loans will also ask you to confirm whether you are currently under any Debt Management programs if you currently have outstanding debts that you are in the process of repaying and what your credit score is.

Can Smarter Loans help you get a loan with bad credit?

Smarter Loans can help you find lenders who will lend to you even with bad credit. When filling out the form make sure to check Smarter Loans can help you find lenders who will lend to you even with bad credit. When filling out the form make sure to check the correct box when asked about your credit score. Smarter Loans will then find lenders who are prepared to take you on as a risk, based on the other financial information that you have given about yourself. Let's see an example.

If you have a bad credit score you will typically be offered higher interest rates and harsher repayment terms. One way to negotiate better terms is to put up security. If you own your home or a car then you can offer this as security on the loan in return for better terms, this is called a secured loan.

Did you like this article?

Alexandre Desoutter

Alexandre Desoutter has been working as editor-in-chief and head of press relations at HelloSafe since June 2020. A graduate of Sciences Po Grenoble, he worked as a journalist for several years in French media, and continues to collaborate as a as a contributor to several publications.