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Whether you want to renovate your house, consolidate debt or buy a new car, £15,000 can be a game-changing sum of money. But it’s a significant sum for a lender, too. If you’ve got good credit, you can make meaningful savings by comparing the market-leading rates, and if you’ve got bad credit, you may need to consider securing the loan against your property.
Your available options for a £15,000 loan depend on your credit score. Lenders tend to be pickier for sums of this size than smaller loans. But even if the most favourable terms are out of reach, there are providers offering loans of this size to those with bad credit.
Been rejected by a lender or know your credit isn’t great? It’s not the end of the line.
Compare the best rates available on the market from a panel of good-credit lenders.
Regardless of credit history, complete one fast, simple form to compare multiple lenders.
Personalised ratesUnderstandably, if you’re worried about your credit score, you won’t want to just apply to the first lender you come across.
A good loan matching service can help you to check which lenders would approve you for a loan (plus the actual rates they would offer you), in a matter of minutes and without affecting your credit score. A loan matching service is a broker that runs “soft search” credit checks with a number of lenders to see which would approve you. You’ll need to fill in a short online form, but it’s a lot faster than going to multiple lenders individually.
See which lenders will approve youMany lenders will be willing to lend out £15,000 without security if you have very good credit, but if you don’t, specialist lenders might still offer you an unsecured loan. These lenders will promote that they look at more than just your credit score when considering your application, but they’ll also hike up the rates to mitigate the risk they’re exposed to – potentially charging upwards of 40% p.a.
In this situation, you do have a couple of other options. You could apply for a guarantor loan, where you apply with a friend or relative (who has good credit) who promises to step in and repay the loan if you can’t. In certain situations, guarantor loans can allow you to access larger loans and/or lower rates than you might alone, but they do still come with painfully high rates – typically around 35-50%.
Note that £15,000 is the largest amount you can borrow with a guarantor loan, but some lenders will only allow a £10,000 loan if your guarantor is not a homeowner.
Alternatively, if you own a home with a mortgage, you could consider using the equity in your property as security. Secured loans could offer rates of around 7-15% but require very careful consideration. For one thing, you’re putting your home on the line, and for another, if you borrow £15,000 at, say, 11% p.a. over 15 years, the loan’s length could make it a false economy. Secured loans are commonly used for debt consolidation, where they can prove smarter than an expensive “stop-gap” loan, which doesn’t solve financial problems but just defers them.
With a secured loan, you’ll be asked to put forward an asset (usually a property) that the lender can sell to recoup their losses if you don’t pay the loan back. With an unsecured loan, it’s not necessary to put down any collateral.
Lenders typically ask for security when there’s more risk involved – for larger sums, longer terms, lower credit profiles or some combination of these.
Unsecured loans typically apply a fixed rate of interest, meaning borrowers can budget with certainty – knowing their monthly repayment figure will remain the same throughout the loan and also knowing in advance what the loan will cost overall. Secured loans, which are effectively second-charge mortgages, usually involve longer loan terms, so lenders won’t be willing to fix for the full loan term (although they may offer an introductory fixed-rate period).
It’s worth noting that lenders issuing unsecured loans can still take legal action against a borrower to get any money they’re owed, however.
If you have a poor or limited credit history and can’t get a standard personal loan, you could consider a guarantor loan. £15,000 is the absolute maximum you can borrow with an unsecured guarantor personal loan, and in fact, many guarantor loan companies won’t stretch this far.
When selecting a guarantor to financially back your loan, they’ll need to be a homeowner with an excellent credit score. They may also need to have a decent amount of equity in their home – so a first-time buyer with a short period on their mortgage may not be eligible.
With £15,000 being such a large amount, to keep monthly payments affordable, most of us would require a longer loan term. Most guarantor lenders expect the £15,000 to be paid back over a maximum of 5 years. However, even over a term as long as this, the monthly repayments are still likely to come in at more than £450, with the best guarantor loan interest rates currently around 30%.
Most lenders aim to process and approve your application the same day. However, there are factors that can delay the application or even result in it being rejected. If both you and your guarantor make sure your application form is accurate and honest, you will increase your chance of a speedy approval.
| 5% annual interest rate | 10% annual interest rate | 25% annual interest rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Over 2 years | £658 | £692 | £801 |
| Over 3 years | £450 | £484 | £596 |
| Over 4 years | £345 | £380 | £497 |
| Over 5 years | £283 | £319 | £440 |
| 5% annual interest rate | 10% annual interest rate | 25% annual interest rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Over 2 years | £15,794 | £16,612 | £19,214 |
| Over 3 years | £16,184 | £17,424 | £21,470 |
| Over 4 years | £16,581 | £18,261 | £23,873 |
| Over 5 years | £16,984 | £19,122 | £26,416 |
Here’s an example of a £15,000 loan at a fixed rate of 7% over five years. You can see that in early repayments, you’re actually paying a relatively large amount of interest (the grey bit) and chipping away at the capital more slowly. But towards the end of the loan, each repayment goes almost entirely towards clearing the original sum borrowed.
Each bar represents an individual monthly repayment – you can hover or click to get a closer look at what’s going on in a particular month.
It’s not just your income and your credit score that lenders will consider when assessing your creditworthiness. Most will ask what the money is being borrowed for, using your answer to judge how likely you’ll be to pay it back on time. They’ll also want details of your employment status to make a judgement about your job security.
Most personal loan contracts forbid borrowers from spending the money on a business. However, if you wish to borrow £15,000 to start or grow a small business, there’s a wide selection of business loans (including government-backed loans) available from both standard and specialist lenders.
Whether you’re looking to purchase a house, a car or even consolidate your debt, there are different ways to borrow up to £15,000. The most common loans are unsecured, secured and guarantor loans. Note that whilst it may be possible to get a loan with bad credit, your options may be limited. It’s important to ensure you’re aware of the loan rates and can make the repayments on time, as failure to do so could harm your credit score.
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