Can you get a Abound loan if you have bumps in your credit history? 🗃️

Abound bypasses credit scores, but does that mean credit history doesn't matter?

Credit scores are a lot like passport photos: often out of date and unflattering.

Abound does not use credit scores, and we do not require a long credit history to qualify for a loan. Instead we use bank transaction data to understand our customers' overall financial situation.

However, we do take credit history into account where it is present.

Our approach means we approve more people for loans and offer lower rates than many other lenders. However there are still many reasons why we may not be able to approve a customer for a loan.

In general, Abound can not lend if:

• a loan would be unaffordable for a customer, or
• a customer is behind with their debt repayments, or
• a customer has recent unresolved credit defaults and CCJs, or
• we judge that a customer has potentially unsustainable or rapidly increasing existing credit commitments.
• we detect significant levels of gambling, investment or crypto activity from your bank transactions.

We explain more about our assessment process below.

That unflattering credit score...

Your credit score is just one piece of information about your financial situation. It tells lenders whether you have had any trouble with paying bills in the past. When people struggle financially, this is often down to the kinds of misfortunes that can happen to any of us: losing a job, your car breaking down, getting ill. Even if a low credit score is down to bad financial decisions, it should not be the end of the world. People change and can become better at making good choices about managing their finances.

We at Abound believe that where people have started to do better financially, then past misfortunes and poor decisions need not determine their ability to borrow money now. This is why we do not base our decision on credit scores, which take a very long time to improve, but on actual, up-to-date, day-to-day income and spending. This way we can see how people are doing in the here and now.

You know how often people's passport photos don't look that nice? They are an important piece of information about what someone looks like, especially because those automatic passport gates are designed so that they can recognise you based on the photo. (As long as you remember to take off your glasses and stop smiling!) But you wouldn't use them as a profile picture on social media, let alone an online dating site. You would use photos that say something more about who you are right now and about the good things in your life.

This is what we do here at Abound. Instead, we look at your financial situation more broadly and our decision will be mainly based on how much you are currently earning and spending on a regular basis.