Vulnerable and self employed

jimfitz81

Hi guys, after a bit of advice.
I'm a self employed heating and gas engineer and yesterday received the text message from the NHS saying I'm vulnerable (due to meds I take) and to stay home for 12 weeks.
Obviously, I understand the seriousness of the situation so immediately went through my diary cancelling appointments.
I currently have a business loan that I'm paying off and a personal loan. I called the loan companies to advise of my situation and that I had to self isolate for 12 weeks so would therefore not be working. The best they could do was to freeze the account but said that the account would still go into arrears and that I'd need to arrange a payment plan to pay it back when I return to work. I was also advised it would affect my credit rating which I have work hard to get into the 'excellent' bracket.
I think this whole situation is massively unfair. I'm staying home because I've been told to by the government yet once this is over, im going to be in a shed load of debt and my credit rating will have plummeted!
Surely this cant be right?

Jeremy535897

If you agree with a creditor that you will defer payments before you miss a payment, it is not supposed to affect your credit score. Ask them why it affects your credit rating.

7Phil

The nature of your loan conditions may mean you can't get a repayment holiday. In that case if you don't make repayments then it will affect your credit score by missing a payment and going in arrears (I am not sure what freezing the account means - maybe they won't hassle you for going in arrears?)

Information and guidance is still forthcoming but for the personal loan at least, it's not likely to see many concessions being made. If you are worried about protecting your credit score then try make repayments a priority (can you dip into a credit card?) at least for a couple of months while guidance starts coming out.

This crisis is grossly unfair and will hurt many people in many ways. The globe is switching to a keep the public safe position at the cost of everything else. We will just need to weather it and count our losses later, and that's tough advice to hear I know. 

calcotti

I would expect that after the current crisis has passed (it will eventually) lenders will have to examine credit scores differently otherwise there may not be many people they can lend to. It is obvious that many people will have difficulty with debt at the moment.