FAQs

  • Lifestyle loans offer loans for people who may have had a few blemishes on their credit file and therefore can’t get the cheapest loans in the market, but who have a stable income of over £1000 and who we judge can afford the monthly repayments.

  • The simple answer is yes, but the reality is sadly a little more complicated. Like all lenders we want to lend to you if we are confident that you’ll repay your loan. Marks on your credit file can have an impact for a long time and in most instances we aren’t too worried if you had issues a year ago or more. However, if you have had lots of missed payments, returned direct debits or have already taken lots of credit in the very recent past, we’re unlikely to be able to lend to you.

  • What is Open Banking?

    Traditionally, lenders would look at your credit history from your credit file information held at one of the credit bureaus, Transunion, Equifax or Experian. They’d look at your history and make assessments based on what they found there. Open banking is an FCA approved way for you to share your banking history with approved 3rd parties, to help you get the right products for your circumstances.

  • Yes. Banks only give a small number of approved AISPs (Account Information Service Providers) read only access to your account. They can access your history, but CANNOT take payments or make any changes to your bank account.

  • The AISP (Account Information Service Provider) we use is called consents.online. consents.online is accredited by the FCA, and they work with lots of different lenders and other financial institutions to provide access to Open Banking data.

  • With help from consents.online, we verify the information you have already given us by being able to see a read-only copy of your bank statments. We categorise your income and expenditure to make a judgement as to whether the lending is affordable and you will repay the loan.

  • Yes, the only mainstream banks of any scale who do not offer open banking through consents.online are Metro Bank and Co-op bank. If you bank with any of these providers, we will not be able to provide you with a loan.

  • As a final step to ensure that the loan is right for you, one of our staff will speak to you through online chat before we authorise the funds being sent to your account.

  • We want to help as many people as we can to meet their borrowing needs, however we will not lend to customers who:

    • We judge do not have enough income to repay the loan and their other expenses
    • Have had recent defaults and missed payments
    • Anyone we judge to have exhibited recent signs of problem gambling
    • Anyone who has taken multiple loans in the past few months
  • Do you do a credit search?

    Yes, in addition to your bank data we also check your credit file as there are times when your history won’t show up in your banking data, in the same way as your banking data sometimes provides information we can’t find on your credit file