There are two main types of loan that are available in the UK, unsecured personal loans and secured homeowner loans:

Unsecured personal loans are generally repayable on a monthly basis at a fixed rate of interest. They are not linked to your home, meaning that the lender will have little option buy to sue you in the county courts to recover their money in the event that you fail to repay the loan.

Secured homeowner loans or second charge mortgages as they are sometimes known, are similar to personal loans that are secured by a second charge on an already mortgaged property. With this type of loan, your home is at risk if you do not keep up with your repayments. Put simply if yoou don't pay you could lose your home.

By law any loan provider must tell you the APR, or Annual Percentage Rate for the loan. The APR on a loan reflects the true cost of a loan to you, taking into account the loan interest rate and any additional charges. The idea of APR is to make it easier to compare loans from different providers and different terms