(Reuters) - Late last summer, Jeff Whiting was going back and forth with his credit union about whose name should appear on the title of the GMC Yukon he was trying to finance. So the 35-year-old Austin, Texas, attorney went in a different direction, taking a $45,000 unsecured loan from an online lender instead.
The loan he got in late August - from private lending company LightStream - allowed him to avoid having a lien on the vehicle and also allowed him to sidestep the credit union's voluminous paperwork and opinions about whether his wife should be on the title. But his interest rate - 2.19 percent - was about the same as he would have received for a traditional car loan.