Customer owned banks shine in the Mozo Experts Choice Awards for Personal Loans
Personal loan comparison site Mozo.com.au has unveiled the winners of the Mozo Experts Choice Awards for Personal Loans. Our experts filtered through 181 personal loans from 55 Australian lenders to narrow down the top value personal loans and car loans in Australia, across five categories: Best New Car Loan, Best Used Car Loan, Best Secured Car Loan, Best Unsecured Car Loan and Best Personal Line of Credit.
The results showed the majority of top value personal loans and car loans in Australia are offered by customer owned lenders like credit unions, mutuals and building societies.
What is a customer owned bank? As the name suggests it’s a financial institution that is owned by members and passes profits back to its customers (e.g members), not shareholders.
In the Mozo Experts Choice category of ‘Best Unsecured Personal Loan’ all the winners (including CUA, Gateway Credit Union and Newcastle Permanent) were member owned lending institutions.
Other customer owned lenders that took out the top honours across the five categories included Credit Union SA, Intech Credit Union, Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank, QANTAS Credit Union and People’s Choice Credit Union.
See the full list of Mozo Experts Choice winners for Personal Loans here.
Mozo’s top tips for choosing a personal loan
1. Check your credit score
Before you apply for a personal loan it’s important to check that your credit score is in good shape to ensure your application is approved. The Australian Government lists the websites that allow you to download your credit report for free here.
2. Check the comparison rate
Often the headline rate that is displayed in large font in the product information isn’t a true indication of the cost of the loan, as the fees aren’t taken into consideration. So before you jump on board with a low rate loan, check what the comparison rate is to ensure the personal loan is good value once the fees are taken into consideration.
3. Look for flexibility
The most flexible personal loans in the market are those that allow you to set up your repayments on a cycle that suits you (weekly, fortnightly or monthly), make extra repayments when you please, and draw on any additional payments when needed. So keep your eyes peeled for these flexible features when you begin your personal loan search.
You can search our entire personal loan database here or head on over to our Mozo Experts Choice landing page to view the top value personal loans in Australia.