APR confusion

Noodoo

Hi everyone, I applied for a £5000 loan this morning for home improvements, and using the legibility calculator on mse I had a 95% chance of a loan from the Bank of Ireland (boi) and a 100% chance of a loan from someone else, but with a 14% Apr rate. Boi was from 4.3%.
Naturally I applied for the boi one and it's been accepted but they've given me a 21 Apr. I know they don't have to give me the advertised rate, but would I now be better cancelling the loan and applying for the other one?
I don't know how that would affect my chances now that I've already applied for the boi one, but I'd obviously prefer to pay less if possible.
Regards, Phil.

foxy-stoat

You dont need to accept the loan you have been approved for.  Try applying to another lender and see what you get offered.  Depends on your previous search history but 1 search wont make a difference.

jonesMUFCforever

I agree with the above but stop at 2 applications - if you do more it will harm your credit rating - making you look desperate.
Why does nobody apply to their own bank these days>?

Sandtree

jonesMUFCforever said:

Why does nobody apply to their own bank these days>?

When was the last time you saw a high street bank appear top of the list for favourable APRs on loans?

Secondly, all these third party eligibility checkers cannot correctly factor in the "existing customer" factor and so broadly ignore it.

Given the situation of having one poor offer on the table I personally would be looking at potentially my own bank for the second application or at least other providers that offer their own "soft search" option first before applying to a random company based on a third party checker

jonesMUFCforever

A bank will know how you run your  account so use any loan offers to gauge what is on offer. Quite often you can do a soft search by which you can see at what rate they will (or not) lend to you.

So say that your bank offers you an APR of 15% it is unlikely (IMO) that a third party lender will offer you say 3% as everybody basically uses the same data from the CRA's.

kaMelo

Sandtree said:

jonesMUFCforever said:

Why does nobody apply to their own bank these days>?

When was the last time you saw a high street bank appear top of the list for favourable APRs on loans?

Secondly, all these third party eligibility checkers cannot correctly factor in the "existing customer" factor and so broadly ignore it.

Given the situation of having one poor offer on the table I personally would be looking at potentially my own bank for the second application or at least other providers that offer their own "soft search" option first before applying to a random company based on a third party checker

TSB, whom I'd say are a high street bank, top the list with 2.8% on £7,500 - £15,000 currently.
Tesco top the £5,000 - £7,499. Although not high street bank I'll admin but not exactly an unknown.