Do banks check bank statements when applying for loans

Nashefc

Hello,
Quick question. I am looking into getting a loan of around £7500 to purchase a car and have a score of 999 on my credit report in Experian, I have never missed a payment and I seem to be successful when doing soft credit checks. I am wary of applying first with my current account lender as although they rate me as highly likely I am worried they may check my statements and see some gambling transactions. I am never overdrawn and only bet what I can afford. 

My question is how far do banks go when I click on the apply button, not just my current account but another lender perhaps, will they look that far into my statements as they would a mortgage or will they see my decent credit report and be happy.

Just don't want to be chasing applications with various lenders as I know this will affect my credit score which I have done my best to get that high over the years.

Appreciate any feedback.
Thanks,

bris

No they don't, but they also don't care one little bit what your credit score is as it's meaningless to them. 

They go on affordability, they have different ways of knowing the risk or reward you pose to them.

Nashefc

bris said:

No they don't, but they also don't care one little bit what your credit score is as it's meaningless to them. 

They go on affordability, they have different ways of knowing the risk or reward you pose to them.

thanks for this, so when you say they have different ways of knowing the risk this does not include me sending over bank statements after I have done a hard search. I am pretty confident I will get the loan but just wary of them snooping around my statements before it is too late.

DCFC79

Nashefc said:

bris said:

No they don't, but they also don't care one little bit what your credit score is as it's meaningless to them. 

They go on affordability, they have different ways of knowing the risk or reward you pose to them.

thanks for this, so when you say they have different ways of knowing the risk this does not include me sending over bank statements after I have done a hard search. I am pretty confident I will get the loan but just wary of them snooping around my statements before it is too late.

They will check your report, go on the information you provide. Your confident you will get the loan so why are you wary of them snooping over your statements.

[Deleted User]

Lenders can and do sometimes ask for bank statements so they can verify your commitments. 

Nashefc

Because I don’t want them to see some gambling transactions and refuse credit on that basis as I know they do with mortgage applications. Does anyone know how far back they check or ask for with a loan? 

jjdc

Ratesetter certainly do. They'll ask to link to your bank account before quoting to verify income and expenditure. Whether the automated process checks individual transactions, I'm not sure, but id doubt it.

Sandtree

You probably should consider your own bank differently to other banks... clearly your bank will hold a host of data on you and can readily check it systematically. Go to a lender outside of your banking group and they don't have automatic access to the same data.

Most often banks make straight through decisions on lending using data from credit reference agencies, data they hold about you, from National Hunter and CIFAS etc.  If the decision is borderline or its a particularly large amount then they are entitled to ask for you to supply additional data, like bank statements, to aid in their decision making process. Obviously you can choose to decline to and they will end your application. 

Nashefc

Sandtree said:

You probably should consider your own bank differently to other banks... clearly your bank will hold a host of data on you and can readily check it systematically. Go to a lender outside of your banking group and they don't have automatic access to the same data.

Most often banks make straight through decisions on lending using data from credit reference agencies, data they hold about you, from National Hunter and CIFAS etc.  If the decision is borderline or its a particularly large amount then they are entitled to ask for you to supply additional data, like bank statements, to aid in their decision making process. Obviously you can choose to decline to and they will end your application. 

That is great info thank you. Do you know how far back they would check? I could possibly hold off for a couple of months and make my statements look cleaner, less payments due to Xmas etc. 

macman

I had naively assumed that gambling sites would use an innocuous name for their online transactions that did not indicate the nature of the transactions? So not something obvious like 'bettingonthegeegees.com'?

pjread

It does surprise me a little how many people seem to run everything through one single account; but unless you're deliberately hiding the transactions it shouldn't really matter.  I mean, maybe a lender *will* consider it a black mark, but presumably if they asked you "have you made any gambling transactions?" you'd answer truthfully.