Ladder Loans closed down recently. They were part of DFC Global Corp who have such high profile brands on their roster as Payday Express, PaydayUK and The Money Shop. Ladder’s launch came in 2012. They were headed at the time as a project of Inventive Finance Ltd that was a division of DFC. There was some good qualities in this product seen in flexibility and pricing. The term spread was originally set as 6 to 18 months, but this was eventually cut down to 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. The qualifying amounts were £400 to £1500 that could be accessed by all customers. It was however pricing where they stood out the most.

We compare instalment products per £300 borrowed, but since they start at £400 we had to calculate their examples by splitting their £600 charge. When this was done their costs worked out at £76.14 (3) and £140.55 (6). Each of which placed them as one of the cheapest lenders over their active years. The value wasn’t quite as impressive over a complete year whereby they charged £957.20 per £1000. With flexible repayments and good overall value just what went wrong here? We did identity a few areas where they were lacking. There was for instance no account servicing facility for customers. This meant that settlements and general queries had to be made by phone.

They had extended to Saturday trading more recently, but had for much of their time processed applications between Monday and Friday only. There was also never any TV ad campaigning. In contrast, Pounds to Pocket provide logins, they are open 7/7 and there are few lenders that advertise as much as they do. Business may have been slowing recently here, but it is worth raising the point that the owner has adapted The Money Shop to operate online. Since longer term borrowing is available there and now at PaydayUK, perhaps there was simply no room for Ladder to fulfil their potential and take the challenge to major sector brands like Lending Stream and Pounds to Pocket.