Zopa lending criteria ?

iang27

I am 54 and all throughout my life I have never been refused loans, credit cards or any sort of finance.
I have never missed any payments nor had anything against myself or my address which I own outright and have lived at for 20 years.
My 'Noddle' credit file rates me at 5/5 again with nothing negative about me.

My wife who earns over £20k a year and has the same lending profile as myself also has a perfect credit record.

We were looking for a £7000 loan over 2 years and Zopa came up with the cheapest rate so as they do a 'Soft Check' I thought that there was no harm in getting a quote.

To my surprise they turned me down, the first time ever in my life. I am shocked !!!:mad:

I tried a check in my wifes name and they also turned her down.:mad:

The only credit that we have on file is around £2000 on cards and a car each that both leased.

My question is, do Zopa have a completely different lending criteria compared to anyone else or does this mean that even though we have 5/5 credit ratings that we are not going to get credit from now on for some reason.

Apart from Nationwide (who also do a soft check) who we do not have an account with anyway is there anyone else that does a 'soft check' ?

BugsyBrowne

Try nationwide loan soft quote you dont need an account with them to get a loan.

Also take no notice of your rating off noddle.

iang27

Quick update, I have just used Moneysupermarket who checked what they thought we could borrow and in both my own and my wife's case they only scored 6/10 with Zopa and 5/10 with another peer to peer lending group but they scored 9/10 with Sainsburys, M&S, Hitachi ? and a few others.

Maybe Zopa does look at lending differently.

Is 9/10 a give us a decent enough change of a loan or can you actually get 10/10 ???

iang27

BugsyBrowne wrote: »

Try nationwide loan soft quote you dont need an account with them to get a loan.

Also take no notice of your rating off noddle.

Is that not totally accurate then ??

Thanks for the reply.

BugsyBrowne

iang27 wrote: »

Is that not totally accurate then ??

Thanks for the reply.

Exactly any company giving you rating is meaningless as a lender has their own scoring systems and they wouldn't care what Experian or noddle rates you.

gjchester

iang27 wrote: »

Is that not totally accurate then ??

Any credit rating you get is an indication not an absolute, each lender looks at your credit history and will score you differently according to their criteria, one may score high, one low, depending on what sort of customer they wish to attract.

Lets say a lander wanted to know you have a mortgage for 10 years with good history, they may score you lower if you have had 9 years 11 months than if you had 10 years or more. Would that extra month make a difference, probably not, but the scoring will be done by machine who look for absolutes, its 10 years or more, anything less is scored lower.

You'll almost certainly never know why you score high or low for any particular lender, if they told you then it could be open to abuse by people trying to achieve a loan by selectively working on section of their credit record.

DCFC79

Dont get too hung up on the fact that you havent been refused in the past that it doesn't mean you will always be accepted.

What matters is you are in a godd position financially.

jonesMUFCforever

2 X Car lease + Mortgage Might be a reason a lender who has never had dealings with you not wanting to chance a £7k loan.
Why do you not approach your bank (I would ask for £7.5k as this will IMO improve the APR) where your salaries are paid into?

27col

Zopa do have really strong lending criteria, because it is not their money that they are lending. It is the money of people like me who have put in small amounts. Mostly it is money that we cannot afford to lose. We prefer not to take a risk with our money if we can. If too many Zopa borrowers default Zopa would find that a lot of their lenders would pull out their money and then they would not be able to lend to anyone, even if they did have a good credit record. Hence Zopa's strict lending criteria.