Bad credit loans – choose your adviser carefully
If you need a loan and you have a bad credit record, you’re unlikely to be accepted for a standard loan product. Instead, you’ll need to look at the bad credit loans market, where an increasingly large number of specialist products are available. Whilst not as large as the general loans market, there are still a number of different types of loan available, and it can be difficult both to gain access to the whole market, and to determine which loan is the best one for you. The easiest way to overcome these problems is to talk to a bad credit loans expert.
How do I know who to contact?
There are certainly a lot of companies offering access to bad credit loans. Whether you’re looking online, or you consult the personal finance pages of your favourite paper or magazine, there are some things you need to remember when it comes to looking for bad credit loan advice:
- Access to the whole market – some financial advisers are “tied” and some are “independent”. The difference is that tied advisers can only offer advice on a small range of bad credit loans and other financial products – usually those sold by their employer or those companies connected with their employer. In order to get the best deal, you need an independent adviser that has access to the whole of the bad credit loans market.
- FSA authorised – the Financial Services Authority is the government-appointed regulator for the financial services industry. Financial advisers should be authorised and regulated by the FSA in order to ensure that you’re getting the best advice as well as the protection you need should anything go wrong. Always make sure that your adviser and his or her company is either authorised and regulated by the FSA, or is an appointed representative of a group or company that is authorised.
- Fee or commission – some bad credit loan companies charge a fee for their advice. This is fine, and in accordance with their obligations to you under FSA rules. Make sure you know what the fee rates are before you commit to anything, so that you don’t have any nasty surprises once you’ve arranged your bad credit loan. A good company will make their fees clear from the very start – often on their website.
- Single adviser – ask the company if you will have a single adviser who will work with you through the whole process of getting a bad credit loan. This makes things much smoother and gives you confidence in the company.
Prosper Home Loans have the experience and expertise to obtain the best mortgage to suit your individual financial situation. Whether you are planning your first purchase, moving home, thinking about remortgage or debt consolidation, buying a second home, or perhaps considering a commercial venture, let Prosper help. Prosper has extensive experience in working with specialist self cert mortgage lenders, so if you’re looking for self cert mortgages or bad credit mortgages, email your query to: enquiry@prosperhomeloans.co.uk or telephone: 01424 712333 and find out how Prosper can help you.