Lendly Review

Lendly is a personal loan lender that offers loans of up to $2,000. Unlike other lenders, Lendly looks past your credit score for the most part and looks at your employment history when deciding to approve your loan application or not. 

Who is Lendly? 

Lendly is a company that offers loans of up to $2,000 to its customers. Lendly is an “authorized servicer” of a bank called CCBank, which means you are essentially getting a loan from CCBank and Lendly is the middleman. 

According to their website, from being in the loan space for 25 years, Lendly was able to see firsthand how so many Americans needed financial assistance but were unable to find loans that did not break the bank. 

Lendly is right. Tens of millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck where they have to constantly prove their loan worthiness especially when they do not have fantastic credit scores. As such, as an employee, they are forced to turn to loans like payday loans that are both expensive and difficult to pay back. 

Lendly seeks to combat this by creating a loan that does not follow traditional underwriting methods. Instead, it allows borrowers to get loans based on their employment instead of focusing on other factors like your credit score.

Lendly’s Loans

Lendly’s loans and the process of getting these loans is something that you won’t find at most other small personal loan lenders. Overall, some features of Lendly’s loans make it a great loan product to use for those with immediate financial needs, while some negative drawbacks to the loan might make you think twice about getting the loan. Let’s dive deeper into some of the most important elements of Lendly’s loans. 

How Lendly’s Loans Work

Your loan application should not take more than 10 minutes or so. Once you have seent in your application, it will take around a day before you get your decision back.

If your loan is approved with Lendly, you will likely get the loan amount in your bank account the next day. Worst case scenario, the money should appear within your account three days after your loan is approved. 

Once you get your loan, you begin paying it back immediately. With Lendly, the payments for the loan are automatically taken out of your paycheck through direct deposit instead of it becoming something you owe, which is how most other loans work. This may seem bad, but it really helps to prevent Lendly’s customers from failing to make a payment and from their credit score taking a hit as a result. 

However, this repayment method does not comply with every state’s legislation. Depending on the state you live in, and what company you work for, you might repay your loan with an ACH direct debit.  

Repayments are made bi-weekly, and their amounts vary depending on how large your loan is. As you make payments, Lendly reports to Experian, which can help t build your credit score . If you want to, you can pay your loan off early without penalty. 

Loan Approval Process 

Lendly’s approval process is arguably what separates them the most from other loans from competitors. The main difference between Lendly and their competitors comes in the loan underwriting process, or how Lendly decides whose loan application gets approved. 

Most lending institutions mostly rely on your credit report and credit score when deciding whether to lend to you or not. Lendly, on the other hand, places much more emphasis on your current employment. Lendly values hard workers and feels that anyone who is a hard worker should have access to good loans. 

To be eligible for a Lendly loan, you need to have been working at your current job for six or more months. If you try to get a loan with anything less than this, you will automatically get your application denied. 

While Lendly doesn’t put a huge emphasis on your credit score, they still take a look at it. If you meet the employment criteria but you have a  bad credit score, there is no guarantee you will get your loan approved. 

Loan Amounts 

The maximum loan amount you can get with Lendly is $2,000. However, this does not mean that if your loan is approved, you will get $2,000. If you apply for a $2,000 loan, you may only be approved for less than the desired $2,000, depending on some other factors. 

Lendly’s minimum loan amount is $1,000, which is unfortunate. Even if you want to borrow less, Lendly will only let you borrow $1,000 or more. Lendly mentions that since there are no early repayment penalties, you can pay off some of your loans to lower your loan amount. However, you may still have to pay some interest. 

Overall, your loan amount options are very limited with Lendly. If you want a loan for less than $1,000 or  more than $2,000, you are better off looking elsewhere than with Lendly. 

Loan Terms

Lendly’s loans have varying loan terms depending on how large your loan amount is and what repayment schedule you decided on. Whatever the case is, you will be making your payments bi-weekly. Since the payments are automatically deducted from your paycheck, the payments are made every two weeks on your payday.  

Lendly’s loans tend to have a lower interest rate than most payday loans. However, this is not saying much. Lendly still has fairly high APRs, which tend to range from 99% to 199%. 

While this high APR is in some parts related to how soon the loan is paid back, it is mostly due to how expensive the loan is. Thankfully, while the loans tend to be expensive, Lendly claims they do not charge any additional fees, which is something that most other lenders do. 

While still not as expensive as many competitors, Lendly’s loans are expensive enough that it might be in your best interest as a potential borrower to shop around for loans that are not so expensive. 

Is Lendly Legit?

Overall, Lendly is a legit lender that offers legitimate loans that are backed by a legitimate bank. A huge concern when getting a loan is whether your lender can be trusted and if your information is safe with your lender. Both of these are true with Lendly. 

Lendly claims that your information is extremely secure and that your information will never be sold for money. They also claim they will not constantly spam you once you have given them your information. However, there is slightly more under the hood than Lendly talks about. 

Lendly Shares Your Information

Lendly claims they do not sell your information. While this is good, this does not mean that they are not still sharing your information with others. Lendly collects and shares some of your personal information depending on what product you are getting with lendly. 

According to Lendly, this personal information that is shared includes your Social Security number, your account balances, your payment history, your transaction or loss history, your credit history, and your history of overdrafts. This is not a great thing to hear. Further, Lendly doesn’t exactly tell you where this information is going either, which is fairly sketchy. 

Lendly reports that your information is shared for “transactional purposes, marketing purposes (offering you products and services) and joint marketing with other financial institutions.” 

Unfortunately, you cannot limit this information. Agreeing to get a loan with Lendly means agreeing to let Lendly share this information. Even worse, Lendly reports that even when you are not their customer anymore, they will still continue to share this information, which  you cannot limit. 

While Lendly is a legitimate loan product that can be trusted, your information may be used by Lendly in ways that you are not comfortable with. If you want a Lendly loan, you cannot do anything about it, unfortunately.

Pros and Cons of Lendly Loans

Unsure if you should get a Lendly loan still? Let’s look at the pros and cons of Lendly’s loans to make this a little more clear. 

Pros

• Don't only consider credit scores: Most lenders look at your credit score and credit history to decide if your application should be approved. Lendly goes against the grain and instead values your employment history more. If you have been working at your job for more than six months, there is a strong chance you can get a loan with Lendly.  Lendly values hard work and has created a loan product to help hard workers in need of money. 

• Money comes quickly: Loans from lenders like banks and credit unions can take a long time between applying for your loan and getting your loan amount deposited into your bank account. With Lendly, this entire process can take as little as two days. If you are in need of money quickly, Lendly can be a good place to look. 

• No repayment penalties: Many lenders, payday loan lenders, in particular, charge their borrowers ridiculously high fees if they pay their loan back earlier than it was originally due. Lendly sees the problem with this and does not charge their customers anything for repaying their loan faster than required. 

• No additional fees: Many lenders charge a ridiculous fee in addition to their interest that makes their loans extremely expensive. Since these fees are rarely calculated in the APR for the loan, they can blindside you and make your loan much more expensive than you initially imagined. Thankfully, Lendly does not charge any such fees. 

• Can build credit: Paying back your Lendly loan builds up your payment history. As your payment history gets better, your credit score can increase as a result.  Successfully paying off a Lendly loan is a great step if you are trying to rebuild your credit score. 

Cons

• Must borrow between $1,000 and $2,000: Lendly has a minimum and maximum loan amounts that frankly do not make much sense. If you need any more than $2,000 (which you may not even necessarily be approved for), Lendly cannot help. If you only need a few hundred dollars, you again are out of luck with Lendly. Other lenders offer a much greater variety in loan amounts than Lendly.

• Only available in certain states: Most likely due to state regulations, Lendly is only available in 23 states. These states are Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming. If you do not live in one of these states, you cannot get a loan with Lendly. 

• No repayment extensions: Lenders like Possible Finance allow you to easily extend your payment date up to 29 days without any fees. This is not the case with Lendly. If you are struggling to make a payment and need a little more time, Lendly will not give it to you. As a result, you may fail to make the payment which can cause your credit score to take a big hit. 

• Only reports to Experian: While Lendly does report your payments to credit bureaus, they only report to Experian. This means that paying back a loan with Lendly will only impact your credit score with Experian and will not have any effect on your credit score from Equifax and TransUnion. If you are trying to build your credit, this is an unfortunate thing.

• Your information is shared: Lendly does not sell your information. However, they  share it with other institutions, and they are not specific  to who these institutions are. Even worse, you cannot choose whether your information is shared or not. Additionally, even after you are no longer a customer with Lendly, your information is still shared. If you are concerned about the security of your sensitive information, you may be slightly worried about getting a loan with Lendly. 

Lendly Alternative: Possible Finance

Here at Possible Finance, we feel that we offer a superior product to Lendly that can help you if you need cash. We offer loans that are $500 and smaller, and we do not check your credit when you apply for a loan. Your loan can be approved in minutes, and you can get your money deposited into your bank account within the hour!

If you are struggling to make a payment, you can extend your payment up to 29 days right within our app. As you make payments, we report your payments to Experian and TransUnion, which helps build your credit score, which is why we call our loans credit builder loans.  

Interested in getting a loan with Possible? Download our app today and get started!