Preserve your savings & continue to save as you repay
Fully flexible with no early repayment fees
Fast approval
Get our best rate on a loan
Our Share Secured Loan allows you to borrow up to the value of your savings- and get a special Share Secured Loan rate of 4.9%. Apply Now
Preserve and grow your savings
If you could use some extra cash, it’s a cheaper way to borrow without touching your hard-earned savings. You’ll still have the security of knowing your savings are there to draw on for the future if you need them, all while adding to your savings as you repay your loan. Co-op Credit Union Members must save a minimum of £10 per month.
Fully Flexible
We understand that sometimes things change, so our Share-Secured Loan gives you full flexibility to use all or part of your savings at any time to pay off the loan, with no early repayment fees or penalties.
Fast Approval
With no credit checks, you can benefit from our fastest loan approval time.
What you need to know
Savings to the value of the loan balance must stay for the remaining duration of the loan. Savings above the loan balance will become available again as you repay. Share Secured Loans are available up to the value of your savings, up to a maximum of £50,000.
(See FAQs below for full details on how our Share Secured Loan works).
Jenny has £10,000 in her Co-op Credit Union savings account.
She wants to buy a new car but would prefer to keep her savings tucked away rather than spend them.
She can borrow up to £10,000 at our special share-secured loan rate of 4.9% APR, using her savings as security for the loan.
As Jenny repays the loan, she can access her savings above the remaining balance of the loan.
She can also choose to use her savings at any time to repay the remaining balance on the loan. E.g. with £5,000 left to repay on her loan, she could use £5,000 of her savings to clear the loan. She would still have £5,000 left of her original savings, plus any extra savings she has built up during the repayment period.
Share Secured Loan FAQs
How long does it take to get an answer on a Share Secured Loan application?
Decisions on our share-secured loans are faster than standard loan applications. We aim to get back to you within 24 hours on working days, however, this can depend on how busy we are. (We tend to be busiest in October and November in the lead-up to Christmas when our response time may be slightly slower).
Please bear in mind that if you have received your application confirmation it is in the queue and you will be contacted as soon as possible. Often – and especially within the Nivo app – chasing your application up with messages asking for an update will only slow down your answer.
Do you run credit searches for loan applications? Will it leave a mark on my credit file?
As your loan is secured against the value of your savings, we do not need to run a credit check. However, we may still wish to assess the affordability of your loan repayments, so may request access to your Open Banking data, via a service called Planky which allows you to share your bank account transactions – see below for further details.
What is Open Banking and how do you use it to make a loan decision? Who are Planky?
Open Banking is a government-sponsored and regulated system allowing you to share your bank account transactions with a third party. We may use a company called Planky to allow us to access your Open Banking data for certain larger loans in order to asses affordability.
You can think of this as a quicker, more secure and more convenient way for you to share your bank statements with us as you may have done when you applied to borrow with us in the past. If you consent to share your data with us, we get a snapshot view of your payment transactions and you can withdraw your consent again afterwards via your bank at any time.
Consenting to allow us to view your bank account data does not in any way affect your credit score.
Can I top up my loan and how often?
Yes, you can apply to top up your loan at any, provided you have sufficient balance in your savings account to cover the full value of the existing loan and top up
Top up requests are subject to a new application and may include an Open Banking report as detailed above. If you are successful with your top up application, your new loan will be rolled together with your existing one creating one larger loan.
What is the maximum amount I can borrow with a Share Secured Loan?
Share Secured Loans are available up to the value of your savings, up to a maximum of £50,000.
Can I access my savings when I have a Share Secured Loan?
No. A condition of borrowing with a Share Secured Loan from the credit union is that your Regular Shares (savings) are tied in while your loan balance exceeds your Regular Shares balance. These shares act as security in the event that you should fail to repay your loan.
Any savings that are tied to your loan will become available to withdraw when your loan balance falls below your Regular Shares balance. Only the difference between your loan balance and savings balance will be available to withdraw at any one time.
We can consider requests to withdraw Regular Shares which are tied to a loan in circumstances of financial hardship.
Will my regular payment automatically stop when my loan is repaid?
No. While we will often set up a new payment amount either by payroll deduction or Direct Debit when your Share Secured Loan is first set up, the two are not connected and so when your loan is finally repaid, we will continue to take the same amount as a payment each month or payroll period until you instruct us to change the amount.
In these circumstances, the whole amount of your payment will roll into your savings account and be available for you to withdraw when you need to. This is a good way of getting into a savings habit as you get used to going without the payment amount during your loan and so, even though you can withdraw these savings when you need to, you can leave the payment running to quickly build up some savings.
What happens if I miss a loan payment or have trouble making my repayments?
If you are having difficulty keeping up with your payments, the best thing to do is to contact us to explain your circumstances and we will do everything we can to support you.
This might involve, for example, reducing or stopping your payments for a period of time, or covering repayments with your savings temporarily.
If you stop making your payments to us but don’t talk to us about why then we will chase you to establish contact and a plan to repay the debt. Ultimately, a Share Secured Loan does mean that you pledge the value of your shares (savings) as security for the loan. Our last resort should you fail to engage would be to recover the outstanding value of the loan from your savings.
