When it comes to the world of personal finance there is very little that we Brits can claim to know much more about than our US cousins. The images of Wall Street, the Dow Jones – stocks, shares and bearer bonds. It all seems as if they invented the concept.
However, we can claim a small victory in the land of short term loans and pawnbroking that we, and the French, have exported to them. And in volume – anything between about 9-14.5%, if stories are true. We’re talking ABV, here, not APR.
Unlike your regular instant cash loan, those for the upper echelon of society are secured, it would appear. And terms can differ, greatly – the whole process can be stretched out over 90 days or concluded within a week. The instant cash loans are issued as soon as the lender or pawnbroker is in receipt of the goods – and we are talking serious wedge! Not your: borrow £100-£1,500 instantly, no credit check required we are apt to see in adwords – there are reported loans of six-figures being lent on this new-found collateral – wine.
Details in one recent report suggest that some extremely well-off people still need quick cash advances because, despite their prominent wealth, their credit rating is woeful. Beverley Hills is perhaps one of the last places on the planet you’d expect to find a pawnbroker. But this report suggests that one such outfit, which resides above the Californian branch of Bank of America Corp, has a client list that includes Oscar winners, bankers (yep, it’s true) doctors and lawyers.
New York, as you may expect, is home to many pawnbrokers, both those that lend short term loans online and those that have shop fronts in the traditional manner. borro.com, a UK pawnbroker based in the Big Apple, recently lent $120,000 on collateral of 128 bottles of Chateau d’Yquem valued at a cool quarter of a million dollars!
USGoldbuyers.com are another NY outfit who admit that, although they accept the liquid gold as security against their no credit check loans they never want to be in the position where they have to sell it, in the same way that they would prefer to return the gold and fine art they accept at the conclusion of a completed transaction.
Here in the UK Prime Asset Loans have even gone to the extent of cataloguing the valuable bottles of plonk against which it will issue short term loans, lending as much as 70% of the expected resale value. One of the partners, Richard Mews, believes this fee-free type of lending suits investors looking to make a quick gain. If they’re onto a hot tip, stash the wine, collect the money and then pray that the ROI covers the stake and the loan interest.
However, the biggest potential for this type of lending has to go Credit Municipal de Paris; they’ve seen wine as collateral for the best part of five years and have been issuing quick cash advance loans, hence.
Their 18th century fully secured and optimised wine cellar can store up to 90,000 bottles at a time, Bordeaux being the most popular vintage your likely to find in the perfect humidity and temperature environment. At least, if the debtor did default, you’d be able to drown your sorrows in style.