Personal loans are still available but fewer lenders in the market

The number of lenders offering personal loans has dropped by 37% over the last 2 years and whilst shopping around to get the best loan is key, be careful about the impact on your credit report.

According to Moneyfacts.co.uk, the latest personal loans provider to withdraw from the market is Barclaycard.

They follow a long list of others who have already withdrawn, including The AA, Britannia BS, Direct Line, Goldfish, Intelligent Finance, Liverpool Victoria, Lombard Direct, MBNA Europe Bank, MINT, Northern Rock and Virgin Money.

There are though still some good personal loans deals available.

For example, Alliance and Leicester, part of Santander, have a 7.9% APR Typical for their personal loans between £7,500 and £15,000.

Whilst shopping around to get the best personal loan, as Louis Kaszczak points out ‘borrowers need to be wary of making too many applications as this will leave a mark on their credit file and may have a detrimental effect on their chances of being accepted for a loan’.

Your credit report is invaluable and is used by lenders to determine whether or not they will lend to, and if so at what rate.

It is worth regularly checking your credit report – see our article on ‘Credit Report – Why check it?‘, for more on this.