Welcome To Our Blog

Smart-Pig.com is the student lender launched in 2012 by students at Warwick and Herts Universities , in order to give students looking for a short term loan a better deal.

We’re not the same as other short term lenders. Smart-Pig was actually a spin-off from a protest against short term lending that thought out of the box – we rolled up our sleeves and went to head-to-head with the big, ugly giants. One of our founders had a terrible experience with a certain straight-talking lender after they talked his balance straight up to silly levels and sucked his whole student loan away without permission.

Smart-Pig was started partly using one of the government’s fantastic youth Start-Up Loans. We were nominated in 2013 for Rockstar Youth Best Overall Business and in 2014, 2015 and 2016 we were finalists for Alternative Lender of the Year.

What we do differently

• Grace Period - No extra fixed late payment or penalty fees if you miss your due date.
• Interest Cap - Our voluntary interest cap is HALF the cap introduced by the FCA.
• No Rollovers - Our short term loans don't turn into long term ones.
• Ethical Pledge - The way we treat our customers is never going to change!
• Founded by Students for Students - no-one knows student money like we do.

Payday Loan Alternative

We see Smart-Pig loans as a payday loan alternative and not regular payday loans (although they do come under the FCA definition). This is because our company genuinely does work very differently – especially when it comes to the hidden stuff you don’t really see. It’s all because we were set up as an ethical lender from the ground up, meaning our pricing, loan terms, tangible ethical safeguards and internal procedures all have students’ welfare in mind.