On the list of personal finance details that people like to keep private, the most likely to be at the top is how much a person earns. The second is how much they owe. These assertions are not from any study but only from observation of how uncomfortable people get when discussing matters that appear to place a monetary value on their lives.

This is totally understandable. We are human. Our value is not determined by our bank account balance. We do not need the emotional turmoil of comparing our net worth to other people.

However, this very rational decision has the unwanted side effect of drawing an opaque layer over the inner workings of financial services. Because people do not talk enough about what they make, or how much they are able to borrow and at what interest rate they borrow, there isn’t enough information out there to help people make decisions. In this post, I will provide some tips I have learnt about finding the best interest rate for a personal loan.

Before I get to the tips, I would want to state that the reputation that debt has as something to avoid is not totally fair. There are lots of reasons to take on debt – to acquire assets, to smooth consumption, to improve your qualifications, to increase your earning capacity, and so on. You can read more about the case I make for debt here.

Now. to the tips. People in formal employment sometimes have arrangements that will allow them to borrow at an interest rate lower than commercial rates. Therefore you should always start with asking about the existence of such an arrangement. That will be your benchmark for rates offered at other places.

The next step is to find out the rates offered by financial institutions. In order to improve competition among financial firms, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) began making the compiled list of deposit and lending rates of banks available. By looking through the list, one can get an idea about the interest rate that banks charge on loans. This is helpful but clearly inadequate. The list includes only banks and leaves out many institutions that also offer credit products.

A more comprehensive source of information is the Westcape Marketplace. I have previously written about them as a source of information on investment firms. but they also present a range of credit products from a range of firms. You can get details such as the interest rate, guarantors required, whether collateral is required and the kind of collateral, whether payslips or bank statements are needed and so on. Taking a look at westcape.co/loans could save you a lot of time in making the right decision.

This post is sponsored by Westcape Marketspace. Westcape Marketspace is a financial data aggregation website that enables you to compare and access loan and investment services without going to any banking hall.