Possibly the largest source of top quality loans in the UK

The UK loans market remains very competitive with some excellent low interest offers available. The best offers however are reserved for people with a good credit record, and unsecured loans for people who have had problems in the past like mortgage arrears, CCJs, etc have become a lot more difficult to arrange over the last few months because of a rise in defaults in this sector. This is not to say that it is impossible to raise an unsecured loan with a poor credit history, but usually the amounts that can be borrowed are  smaller and interest rates higher than they were last year. It is generally a lot easier for people in this situation to  borrow at lower rates if they can offer security.

Most lenders prefer prospective borrowers to have been in the same job and at the same address for at least three years, with no rent or mortgage arrears and, preferably, a history of regular payments to telephone companies, car hire purchase lenders, building societies etc. They all have different criteria for calculating a prospective  borrower's creditworthiness however and since the interest rates that they charge are usually based on that calculation borrowers can very often find that the rate they are offered can differ substantially from the minimum rate which a particular company  advertises.  It is not unusual that a lender, whose advertised minimum lending rate is higher than the average can actually offer a particular client a cheaper rate than a company with a lower advertised minimum rate, because the risk is calculated in a different way.

How, then,  to find the cheapest rate? The usual advice for someone looking for the lowest price is to shop around and obtain several quotations, but the loans market is different. Apart from a number of cash loans and payday loans  companies, nearly all lenders assess a prospective borrower's creditworthiness by checking the database of credit reference agencies such as Experian, etc. and each of these checks is recorded. If many checks are made against one particular person the possibility of fraud cannot be discounted so some lenders may turn down clients who, otherwise, might have been considered first class applicants. A way to avoid this could be to use a broker, who could make one credit check but use the information from that to approach many potential lenders. Most brokers don't charge any fees but a number may do so particularly if a client  has had credit problems which would make arranging a loan difficult or time consuming. In short then a prospective borrower needs to be realistic about the type of loan to apply for - someone with recent CCJs will certainly not be offered a rock bottom interest rate unsecured loan, and an application for one, and a subsequent rejection, could further damage that person's credit standing. Neither is there any point in failing to disclose problems in the past; these will all come to light when the inevitable credit search is carried out and failure to be completely truthful would prejudice the application.