It used to be that if you needed a quick injection of cash into your wallet without the need for providing salary slips and filling out endless forms of paperwork you went to the local pawnshop. Well, maybe not the local one because they tended to have that big word Pawnbroker on a sign over their shop front and you didn’t want to bump into anyone you knew while you were staggering into the shop with your television or video recorder under your arm. Now alot of us have been there and done that – I certainly will put my hand up and admit I have hocked the vcr on several occasions, but that was quite a long time ago. There was always a feeling of being deceitful about it though and then the kids would question you about the whereabouts of the video recorder when they came home from school…

That’s in the past for the most part because times have gotten worse for the population as a whole and the pawnbroker suddenly had real competition…the cash advance loan – or the emergency loan provider. This option gave you instant cash at often very high interest and naturally the cowboys in the business came to the forefront and dirtied the waters for the rest of the industry. But times are changing and now these providers are adhering to new legislation and even imposing a few much needed guidelines and conditions to their criteria which puts some responsibility not only onto the borrower but the lender as well.

If you sort through the various providers on offer you will notice that most of them will now be asking about your salary, how much you earn, and deciding from there as to whether or not you can afford to borrow what you want to borrow. If this can be extended towards introducing some more stringent guidelines it would certainly give some much needed credibility to the industry.