Fiona Personal Loan Review
Personal loan rating: 3.9/5
- Accessibility: 4.3/5
- Rates and terms: 3.8/5
- Repayment experience: 3.5/5
Personal loan details
- APR range: Starting at 5.99%
- Loan terms: 6 to 144 months
- Loan amount: $1,000 – $250,000
- Minimum credit score: Not specified
Our verdict: Fiona is a loan marketplace, so it could be best if you’re looking for a service to help you shop for loans. It doesn’t provide an annual percentage rate (APR) range for the loans it offers, though, so you’ll need to prequalify to learn more.
Read more about how we rated Fiona.- Streamlined shopping experience: With Fiona, you only need to submit one form to get loan offers from multiple lenders.
- Low minimum APRs: You might get an APR as low as 5.99% (assuming you have excellent credit).
- Owned by MoneyLion: MoneyLion (another lending platform) owns Fiona.
- Offers prequalification: You can see what rates you could be eligible for without taking a hard credit hit.
- Unclear eligibility requirements: Some of Fiona’s partners work with borrowers with bad credit. However, Fiona doesn’t disclose what score you need to get a loan.
- Best for comparing multiple loan offers: If you want to compare more than one lender at a time, Fiona could be a solid choice. Still, you’ll need to prequalify to see essential details like maximum APRs.
Fiona pros and cons
Taking out a personal loan isn’t a decision to take lightly. It might seem like all loans are the same, but each lender has its own features (and rates). Considering pros and cons is a good first step in figuring out if Fiona is right for you.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Might qualify with bad credit May offer both secured and unsecured loans Can shop with multiple lenders at once Offers fixed and variable rates | Does not disclose maximum APR May charge an origination fee Doesn’t offer personal loans directly |
According to a LendingTree study, you could save an average of $1,659 by shopping around for a personal loan instead of taking your first offer. Using a marketplace like Fiona can make it easier to compare multiple offers at once.
However, unlike many other loan marketplaces, Fiona doesn’t provide much information about the online loans available through its platform. Instead of advertising a range of APRs, Fiona only discloses its minimum APR (5.99%). Plus, it doesn’t discuss its partners’ eligibility requirements.
Also, make sure to read the fine print, especially if you have bad credit. You may be eligible for a loan, but you might find a better rate elsewhere. For example, Speedy Cash is listed as one of Fiona’s lending partners. Speedy Cash offers payday loans, and APRs on payday loans often reach the triple digits.
Fiona requirements
Fiona works with dozens of lenders, each with their own personal loan requirements. Fiona states that it will work with “virtually any credit score” but doesn’t specify what credit score you need for a personal loan.
Aside from your credit score, lenders usually review your debt-to-income (DTI) ratio, payment history and other factors when you apply.
If you meet Fiona’s partners’ requirements, you may need to disclose how you plan to use your personal loan. Fiona doesn’t say what you can’t use your loan for — that’s up to the partner it links you with.
Below, you’ll find some popular reasons why people take out personal loans through Fiona.
| Fiona loans can be used for… |
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If Fiona won’t work for your borrowing needs, be sure to shop around for a lender that helps you meet your financial goals and can offer you the best-fitting rates, terms and amounts.
How to get a personal loan with Fiona
Because Fiona is a marketplace and not a direct lender, its application process is a little different from the norm. To use Fiona, you will:
Prequalify
The first thing you need to do is to prequalify for a personal loan on Fiona’s website. Here, you’ll provide basic personal information like your name, date of birth and annual income.
Fiona also asks for your Social Security number so it can perform a soft credit pull. This will not affect your credit score.
Compare your offers
Fiona will use the information you provided to give you a list of loans you might qualify for. When comparing offers, pay special attention to APRs. An APR represents how expensive a loan is, considering interest rates and fees.
Loan terms are also an important metric. These measure how long you will have to pay off your loan. A longer loan term usually means a lower monthly payment, but you’ll typically pay more overall interest.
Check your credit score
It’s almost impossible to figure out if your offers are competitive if you don’t know your credit score. Check your credit score for free by using LendingTree Spring. Then, compare your APRs to the average. You can find this data in the table titled “Personal loan statistics by borrower credit score.”
Accept your loan with the partner lender
When you find your best offer, Fiona will send you to its partner lender’s website to formally apply for a personal loan. To make things easier, the information you gave Fiona might prepopulate on your loan application.
If you’re not happy with the number of offers Fiona gives you, you might want to take steps to boost your odds of loan approval. One especially effective strategy here could include adding a co-borrower to your loan.
How Fiona compares to other personal loan companies
Even if you believe Fiona aligns with what you’re looking for in a personal loan, it never hurts to shop around and compare other potential lenders. Here’s how Fiona stacks up against similar personal loan lenders.
| Lender | Fiona | Upstart | LightStream |
|---|---|---|---|
| LendingTree’s rating | 3.9/5 | 4.5/5 | 4.4/5 |
| Minimum credit score | Not specified | 300 | Not specified |
| APRs | Starting at 5.99% | 7.80% - 35.99% | 6.99% - 25.49% (with autopay) |
| Loan amount | $1,000 - $250,000 | $1,000 - $50,000 | $5,000 - $100,000 |
| Repayment term | 6 to 144 months | 36 and 60 months | 24 to 84 months |
| Origination fee | Up to 6.00% | 0.00% - 12.00% | None |
| Funding timeline | Not specified | Receive funds as soon as one business day | Receive funds as soon as the same day |
| Bottom line | You can shop for a wide variety of loans on Fiona’s marketplace. Although it doesn’t specify some vital information, you can prequalify with no impact to your credit score. | Upstart is one of Fiona’s partners, but you can also apply with it directly. This lender could be perfect if you have bad credit. You might be eligible with a score as low as 300. | LightStream (another Fiona partner) doesn’t charge any fees and offers large loans with long terms. It doesn’t specify its credit score requirements, but it only lends to borrowers with good to excellent credit. |
How we rated Fiona
To come up with our star rating for personal loan companies, LendingTree considered 22 data points across three categories:
- Accessibility: We paid attention to whether lenders offered loans to nontraditional borrowers, as well as those without excellent credit scores. We also checked if lenders offered soft credit pulls, and whether they were transparent about eligibility criteria other than credit scores.
- Rates and terms: We wanted to know if lender rates, terms, amounts and fees were not only transparent but also competitive.
- Repayment experience: We based this category on lenders’ reputations, customer support availability and unique benefits.
The data points reflect every step of the process to shop and apply for, borrow and repay personal loans. A five-star lender, for instance, has flexible eligibility requirements, offers you the chance to prequalify without commitment and supports you in zeroing your balance.
The 22 data points, culled from the lenders themselves, determine the overall rating. We score lenders consistently, sometimes awarding partial points, so that you can make apples-to-apples comparisons when shopping around.
LendingTree isn’t paid for conducting these reviews, and lenders don’t have control over their content. With our reviews and ratings, we aim to give our users the objective and exhaustive information they need to make the best possible decisions.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, Fiona is a legitimate personal loan marketplace. It doesn’t offer loans itself. Instead, it connects you with a partner lender that will handle the loan process. Many of Fiona’s partners are major players in the personal loan market, including SoFi, Lightstream and Upgrade.
On the flipside, some of Fiona’s bad credit lenders might offer loans with triple-digits interest rates. Comb the details before agreeing to your offer.
Fiona doesn’t disclose its minimum credit score requirement. It does mention that some of its partners work with borrowers of nearly any score.
No. When you submit an application to Fiona, it conducts a soft credit pull. If you’d like to pursue one of your offers, you need to submit a formal application with that partner lender. It’s at this point that a hard credit pull is generally required.