While we don't verify specific claims because reviewers' opinions are their own, we may label reviews as "Verified" when we can confirm a business interaction took place. Read more

To protect platform integrity, every review on our platform—verified or not—is screened by our 24/7 automated software. This technology is designed to identify and remove content that breaches our guidelines, including reviews that are not based on a genuine experience. We recognise we may not catch everything, and you can flag anything you think we may have missed. Read more

See what reviewers are saying

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Been charged for an invoice on my FEA even tho Im way bellow the threshold on my earnings. Trying to fill the financial hardship form but the feature won't work on their own platform. Costumer s... See more

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Lauren was very courteous and kindly answered all my queries both in emails, and over the phone putting my mind at ease. In addition, everyone at StepEx whom I had to contact answered my questions pre... See more

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

I would not recommend taking out an FEA, get a bank loan instead. I was desperate to reskill into cyber which is why I made the terrible decision of taking out an FEA stepex. If I had just g... See more

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

Stuck with them due to taking a loan for cyber reskilling course. The repeated circumstance updates is frustrating, especially when having to use a VPN to access the update forms. Have tried on m... See more

Company replied

Company details

  1. Alternative Financial Service

Written by the company

Top qualifications are expensive. A StepEx Future Earnings Agreement (FEA) removes the cost barrier to enable everyone to fulfil their professional potential.


Contact info

2.7

Poor

TrustScore 2.5 out of 5

29 reviews

5-star
4-star
3-star
2-star
1-star

Hasn’t replied to negative reviews

How this company uses Trustpilot

See how their reviews and ratings are sourced, scored, and moderated.

Companies on Trustpilot aren't allowed to offer incentives or pay to hide reviews. Reviews are the opinions of individual users and not of Trustpilot. Read more

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Ghost company

To be clear - there should be an opportunity to leave negative star ratings, as to leave one star would imply a certain level of service has been attained. This could not be further from the truth!

Utterly woeful communication from Stepex. The information for course details on their website for London Business School is incorrect and impeding my application for funding.

There are no telephone contact details for anybody allegedly employed or associated with this business.

Daniel George purposes to have setup this business because of the problems with obtaining postgraduate funding. My experiences during this past week would suggest he has achieved nothing with regard to solving this issue.

In the past week, I have requested assistance via the only means of communication, the Stepex chat function. After several steps of automated interaction, you finally have the ability to leave your e-mail address and query.

A few hours later, you receive what initially looks to be a personal e-mail from Lauren. DO NOT be fooled by this, as after receiving several of these personal e-mails, all from the lovely Lauren, it begins to dawn on you, this also is an automated e-mail, as each of my several replies to each e-mail go completely unanswered when I explain the issue with the data on their website.

Q. Are any human beings employed at Stepex?

Q. Is there any funding availability whatsoever?

Q. If Stepex is so passionate about offering FEA
funding for postgraduate programmes, why does
Stepex refuse to offer any form of verbal
communication details?

From my experience this past week, this business comes across as one in dire straits.

I imagine I will not receive any form of positive response from Stepex regarding my experience to date of their woeful and complete lack of professionalism communication and action.

October 6, 2023
Unprompted review
StepEx logo

Reply from StepEx

Hi SP,

In answer to your questions:

1) Yes we have team of incredibly passionate individuals who work very hard to maximise the opportunity for the less wealthy to upskill. Including Lauren who you reference, who is absolutely a real person and has received very positive reviews for her customer service.

2) We have deployed over £20m of funding for education and expect the deployment to increase.

3) We process hundreds of applicants each month and as a technology company, we aim to do so automatically as much as possible. If you had emailled contact@stepex.co and your query required an operator to respond, a member of the team would have been in touch typically within 4 working hours.

I'm sorry that you didn't have a good experience. Funding is partially provided by the education provider themselves, the delay in decision making on your case was due to us waiting for them to decide, unfortunately the decision was no.

I hope you found another form of funding and were able to pursue your education.

All the best.
Team StepEx

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

Communication is not good

I’ve been paying into stepex for over a year now having got a loan to retrain as a web developer. I think this is mainly an issue due to their lack of staff (looks like there are only a few of them as I always end up hearing from the same people) but when something does go wrong, communication is terrible. Emails seem to go missing and occasional unexpected payments are taken without prior communication as to why. I’ve had to ask twice for a rundown of everything I’ve paid them because it’s got to the point where I’m not entirely trustful they know themselves! All in all I’m looking forward to completing the payments and not only because having to pay back 10% of my net income is shockingly high, even with the payment cap. They also didn’t go over an income and expenditure form with me when I got into difficulties with repayments which I’m fairly sure is not legal?? I may be wrong on that point.

September 4, 2023
Unprompted review
StepEx logo

Reply from StepEx

Hi SG,

I'm sorry to hear that you have been unsatisified with communications.
I can see that you have corresponded with us a few times.

I'm also sorry to hear you found repaying this agreement difficult. The FEA you took out is specifically designed to be affordable. Whereby, you repay less when you earn less. Imagine how much worse it would have been having to pay a fixed amount that would have been much higher as interest would have been applied.

Regarding the absence of an income and expenditure form and this being not legal - the correspondence you had with our staff was entirely compliant.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Application experience

Application experience - waste of time

I applied for a coding bootcamp. Already the first entry in the application process makes it very clear what program you apply for and how much you need for that.
I had to fill several questionairs, give them access to the bank account, answer several rounds of questions and do an id verification. After about a week doing everything, I received the information they are only waiting for the program to confirm that I have a spot with them. Two days later I received an auto-generated mail, saying my application is declined, there is no capacity.
If there is no capacity then why doing the whole process? If there were more applications than spots, why not be transparent about it?
It was an overall waste of time and moreover there is now not enough time to find a different financing solution before the program starts, so I have to wait for another class.

August 10, 2023
Unprompted review
StepEx logo

Reply from StepEx

I'm sorry to hear about your experience.

We do require significant information to be able to assess your suitability for a loan agreement as do all regulated lenders. This is in order to comply with regulations that protect consumers such as making sure someone else can't take out a loan on your behalf and that you are likely to be able to afford the repayments.
For many of our loans, we require part funding to be provided by the education provider. In this case your education provider decided there were other candidates they would like to prioritise.

I hope you enjoyed your subsequent class.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Very efficient and courteous

Lauren was very courteous and kindly answered all my queries both in emails, and over the phone putting my mind at ease. In addition, everyone at StepEx whom I had to contact answered my questions pretty much straight away, even in out of office hours. Highly recommended. Diana

July 27, 2023
Unprompted review
Rated 5 out of 5 stars

The customer service I received from…

The customer service I received from Lauren was excellent, I had an issue where the ID card option wasn't being shown on the website but she helped me sort this out quickly and thoroughly. Easy to use and great customer service.

June 26, 2023
Unprompted review

The Trustpilot Experience

Anyone can write a Trustpilot review. People who write reviews have ownership to edit or delete them at any time, and they’ll be displayed as long as an account is active.

Companies can ask for reviews via automatic invitations. Labeled Verified, they’re about genuine experiences.

Learn more about other kinds of reviews.

We use dedicated people and clever technology to safeguard our platform. Find out how we combat fake reviews.

Learn about Trustpilot’s review process.

Here are 8 tips for writing great reviews.

Verification can help ensure real people are writing the reviews you read on Trustpilot.

Offering incentives for reviews or asking for them selectively can bias the TrustScore, which goes against our guidelines.

Take a closer look