Find out how much you really need to borrow
Although you may have an idea in your mind how much you want to borrow its always worth working out how much you actually need to borrow and whether you can then afford the repayments on this amount. You should bear this in mind if you already have some unsecured loans or credit cards where you’re already paying higher rates of interest. If so you need to consider whether you’d be better off consolidating these over a longer term or maintaining them as they are.
Applying for a secured loan
Once you worked out how much you want to borrow, you can either phone our secured loans advisers on Freephone 0800 054 2066 or apply online. If you don’t have much time, you can ask our advisers to call you back at a more convenient time. On making an application you will give us your permission to make any checks on your credit file, which are needed before we can source with one of our lenders.
Once we receive your application
When we receive your secured loan application the first thing we do is obtain a credit check through a credit reference agency such as Experian or Equifax. This will help us to determine the most appropriate lender according to your personal circumstances. It is worth remembering at this point that not all secured loan lenders are the same. For instance some will accept certain levels of adverse information on a credit file and others won’t. Some will accept self employed applicants and others won’t. Once we found the most appropriate lender we prepare a quote for you and issue an advance copy of the proposed agreement.
You then enter what is generally called a “consideration period”.
What is a consideration period?
A consideration period is similar to a cooling off time, and is the time between us issuing the advance copy and the loan documents for signing 8 days later. All secured loans brokers must not contact you during this consideration period but are allowed to respond to any requests from you. For instance if you’re unsure about any details on the advance copy, you can contact us and we can answer any questions.
Issuing the secured loan documents for signing
After the 8 day consideration period has elapsed, we then issue all the loan documents to you for signing. We also request any additional details we will need from you as part of the loan processing, such as signature ID, address ID and original payslips if you’re employed.
On receipt of the signed loan documents
When we receive the secured loan documents back from you, included will be an authority to mortgagees. This authority allows us to check some mortgage details with your mortgage company, including the balance outstanding, monthly payment and if any payments have been missed in the last 12 months. When we request this from your mortgage company, they usually charge us a fee for supplying the information and their response usually takes 7-10 days to arrive back at our offices. We may also require your mortgagees consent to any secured loan and if required, we request this at the same time.
Valuation
Once we have all your signed documents and your mortgage companies consent to the secured loan, we need to assess the value of your property to make sure there is sufficient equity under our lenders criteria. Each of our lenders has a panel of approved surveyors which we can use to obtain a secured loan valuation. The cost of this valuation is paid by Charles Frank Finance.
Full case
Once we have all your signed documents, the reference and consent from your mortgage company and the valuation, your ‘full case’ details can be sent to our lender for this final checking before payout.
Security phone calls
Once our lender is satisfied that they have all the information required to complete the secured loan for you, they undertake a brief security phone check with you. All secured loan lenders do this and it is nothing to worry about. They simply need to check the application details and to protect you as the applicant.
Your secured loan completes
On completion of your secured loan, our lender will send you a cheque for the amount requested. If you had any existing secured loans that were to be redeemed from the proceeds of your new loan, or any arrears on your 1stmortgage, these will be deducted from the loan amount and sent direct to the lender. The lender will then return all your original documents to you. Processing a secured loan should take between 3-4 weeks depending how quickly the signed documents are returned to us and how quickly the mortgage company supplies their reference.
