Lending against assets, all assets, with James Constantinou (Prestige Pawnbrokers)
How to Lend Money to Strangers
Brendan le Grange
4.9 • 43 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where do you go next when you already have your own show on Channel 4? Well, to HTLMTS apparently 😁
In today’s episode, I speak to the founder of Prestige Pawnbrokers and star of Posh Pawn, James Constantinou. It was a slightly left-field booking for me when the idea was first floated, but then I realised that the much-maligned pawnbroking model can also be a disruptive approach to asset-backed lending. What would you do if you needed funds to start a business?
Mortgage your house?
That’s often your only option, but what if you don’t need that much or you don’t need the money for all that long? Why can’t you leverage your smaller assets? Maybe you have a nice watch or some jewellery, a painting, or a signed first-edition you inherited from your gran. Why can’t you take those into the bank to borrow against? The simple answer is because no bank manager is going to go through the trouble of valuing your stuff… but a pawnbroker will and therein lies the rub.
You can learn more about Prestige Pawnbrokers on their home page, or on their Twitter or Insta
They also have an app for Apple and Android
I watched the show Posh Pawn on YouTube, but it’s probably easiest to find it via their site here
You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect while there), and if you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me at brendan@howtolendmoneytostrangers.show
A full written transcript with timestamps can be found on HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.Show
You can also find my pulpy action-adventure novels in all their formats on Amazon
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If at the end of the loan, we're going to have to sell your Ferrari or your Lamborghini. |
| 0:05.5 | That's the worst case scenario for us as a business. I mean, we don't want to sell people's goods. |
| 0:10.0 | So I never wanted to set this business up and be a shocky people used to think, |
| 0:13.6 | oh, well, a call broke, you know, it's going to get his hands on my goods and he's going to |
| 0:17.3 | sell it and there's going to be, that's not the case at all because it might be selling |
| 0:21.0 | us and we've lost that client. Now we spend thousands of thousands on marketing to get these |
| 0:26.5 | clients to come in with their goods. Welcome to How to lend money to strangers. I'm your host, |
| 0:37.5 | Brendan the Grange and today I'm discussing one of the more interesting business models we've covered |
| 0:42.5 | and if you don't believe me, just look for the channel for documentary, Poshporn, |
| 0:46.6 | a behind the scenes look at today's guest, Prestige Pornbrokers. When I was a kid, |
| 0:52.6 | Porn shops were something you saw on TV shows, maybe a cop drama where somebody was trying to sell |
| 0:58.4 | some stolen goods and when I started working at least in South Africa, they were never considered |
| 1:04.1 | part of the formal lending economy. There was something I didn't really think about. Until I guess |
| 1:09.5 | I moved to Asia in Hong Kong, they're red and green neon signs or iconic. But if I remember |
| 1:16.2 | correctly, it was first of the Philippines that I actually encountered them as a potential data |
| 1:20.8 | source as a formal lending organization. But even then, I would have regarded them as lenders of |
| 1:26.6 | last resort. What we're going to talk about today is a very different porn business. James |
| 1:32.1 | Constantino and his team at Prestige Pornbrokers serve a very different clientele to the stereotypical. |
| 1:39.6 | As we'll hear off to the break, they're issuing loans against everything from helicopters to |
| 1:44.4 | Lamborghini's to designer handbags. So stay tuned to hear about how to turn assets lying around |
| 1:51.4 | into accessible cash and why consumers might want to do that instead of going to their bank. |
| 2:21.2 | James, generally when I'm interviewing a leader in a lending business, they have a corporate |
... |
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