As loan is not secured against any of your assets you do need to have a positive credit history in order to qualify for an unsecured personal loan.

People who use unsecured loans are generally those who are not in a position to offer to collateral for example, people who don't own a home or have a poor credit history, County court judgements, mortgage arrears or debt problems.

Providers of secured loans will only supply someone with a loan if they have adequate collateral to secure loan. An unsecured loan provider does not require an individual to have any collateral, this loan is ideal for people who rent their homes.

Although you aren't required to offer your home as collateral, it is worth highlighting that many a loan company still require you to be a home owner in order to be eligible to apply for an unsecured loan.

The benefit of an unsecured loan is that you do not need to own your home to qualify for a loan. You will typically be able to borrow between £1,000 and £10,000.

Rate tarts will wait until interest free period is about to expire on their current credit card, and then check through lists of providers to find another card they can switch to that has another 0% interest rate introductory period. The growth of financial comparison sites like uSwitch, moneynet ( http://www.moneynet.co.uk/ ) and moneyfacts (http://www.moneyfacts.co.uk/ ) has made this money saving behaviour easy to achieve.

The providers have effectively become victims of their own success. As more and more card companies began offering interest-free balance transfers, card providers found that they had to offer longer and longer interest-free periods to win customers, which in turn meant less profit.

Analysts have recently estimated that rate tarts are currently costing lenders £1 billion a year.