This success story is a little different to most of ours. We do not do many debt consolidation applications. The ones we do generally involve much smaller amounts of consolidation than this one did. Initially we were reluctant to take this application on.
However, this had some quirky circumstances that made us a little more comfortable with it and so we took a look at it in more detail.
The situation
The customer had a lot of debt (circa £85k on loans and credit cards). There were a number of reasons as to why that debt was ran up. I wont go in to details on this post, but they were reasons that made us feel comfortable it was unlikely to happen again.
The customer wanted to add this debt to their mortgage in order to lower the monthly repayments they were having to pay out each month. This would allow them to make a dent into the balances rather than just paying the interest each month. They had previously been declined by another lender and so they got in touch to see if we could help.
The overall debt combined with the mortgage was quite low comparititively speaking with their income. That combined with what the new LTV on their home would be were the biggest factors for why we took this on. Where as ordinarily we may have shied away with.
What we did
Whilst we do not do a lot of debt consolidation, we do have experience with these types of applications. We have a couple of “go to lenders” who are generally more open to debt consolidation than others. Funnily enough one of those lenders was who the applicant had already been to.
We discussed the situation with a few lenders and eventually narrowed it down to a couple of options. In the first instance we went with a lender who was most likely to accept, they were marginally more expensive (less than £10 a month more). In this case however the customers priority was speed as they were struggling with the monthly repayments.
The outcome
The application went in at the beginning of the month. It was offered within a week (which included the valuation!) But even more impressive the new mortgage had completed before the end of the month!
Everyone pulled together with this to help it fly through. The client was on the ball with everything, he went with a solicitor we knew which meant we could call in some favours. It meant everything from start to finish was done in around 25 days! That meant the customer did not have to make any further payments on the credit cards. Thath was helpful as they were getting to the point where it was hit and miss as to whether they would be able to.
The application has gone through and the clients are now more or less debt free. They now have manageable monthly repayments and are over the moon. They now also have spare money each month and the amount of interest they pay each month is not 85-90% of the repayments but much closer to half that!
Summary
This is a nice story of something we usually shy away from, but for the right case we can do it. We can get a solicitor to turn it round quickly and it is a great example of where choosing the right lender, a good solicitor and everyone working together quickly and efficiently meaning it was all turned around very quickly.