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I have issued another general warning about the lack of money available to lend and the subsequent repercussions. I have had many people writing to me explaining that they had strong credit but have been declined for loans on several occasions and are now being told that they have dropped into the sub-prime category, which means they will pay high rates of interest if they are able to secure finance at all. The reason for this is the fact that whilst there are still lenders willing to offer low rates Read more »

On the 14^th September I attended a meeting of the good and great in the vehicle finance industry at the London offices of Grant Thornton. The purpose was to debate the challenges of the industry which would be reported in the journal of the industry, Motor Finance. There were many conflicting views but the bottom line is that we are still in for a tough time. Clearly there is a lack of liquidity in the vehicle finance Read more »

Cleaning up your credit file has never been more important. Less money is available to lend which means that you really must make sure that you have no errors on your file and anything that can be corrected is corrected before you apply for finance. Even using a bad broker, who makes multiple applications to several finance companies, using your single finance application, can cause you to have your credit Read more »

A few years ago I was a consultant to Yes Car Credit, a company that I hugely respected because, in many ways, they got it right! However, becoming the UK’s largest seller of used cars in about 4 years carried with it a number of problems that the UK press, as always, was eager to pounce upon. The company was selling nearly 50,000 cars per annum at the point of its demise and I would admit that the combination of Read more »

It was earlier this year when I warned that money was tight in the vehicle finance sector that would mean only the squeakiest of clean business would be written. In some instances I heard that acceptances were down to just 20% of applicants, not because the vast majority of applicants were poor credit risks but available funds meant this was the maximum number of applicants that could be accepted. Many Read more »

Last week I attended Motor Finance Europe 2009, one of the most important events of the year with regard to identifying how the European motor industry and the finance sector in particular is coping with the downturn. So I packed a couple of bottles of Paracetamol in the briefcase along with a couple of razor blades as I was totally convinced that by lunchtime I would be feeling more than a little suicidal and Read more »

Unless you work in the finance industry you may not fully understand the term ‘credit crunch’. It is simply the running out of money to lend, hence the reason why the Government is having to step in to inject more money into the economy and provide money for the banks to lend – in theory. Of course all they are doing is using the money to bolster their balance sheet making the ‘cash in bank’ look a little healthier. The problem for you and me is the ability to borrow money, Read more »