RAC Loans

When you look for a loan with us, we soft search your credit history, which means we can check your eligibility without harming your credit score. While this search is visible to you on your credit report, it’s not visible to other lenders and will not affect your credit score.

Once your application has been approved, the lender may call or email you to finalise your loan and arrange for the funds to be paid out. You may be required to send documents to the lender if they need further information. This means you could receive your funds as quickly as the same day within minutes of applying, or up to 5 days after being approved, depending on the lender.

A personal loan is an unsecured loan, where you borrow a set amount and make regular monthly repayments set at a fixed interest rate for a fixed term. Our partnership with Freedom Finance, a leading credit broker, means we can offer our customers a different solution to borrowing money and finding a loan. We work alongside Freedom Finance so we can provide our customers with their very best loan offer from a panel of hand-picked lenders we trust.

APR is the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) — it is used to describe the overall cost of money borrowed. It takes into account the interest rate, when it is charged, any fees charged when setting up the loan and any other costs applicable to the loan. Our APR starts from 3.4% and we cap the rate at 49.9%.

The Representative Rate is an APR which an advertiser reasonably expects most people who apply for this product will get — our representative rate is currently 9.9% (fixed).

The APR you receive may vary from the advertised rate. This is the representative rate which we expect most people who apply to get.

The rate you are offered will be a personalised rate based on your current individual circumstances including credit information held about you by the credit reference agencies, the loan amount you borrow and length of time you borrow for.

To help understand whether to provide you with credit and to ensure responsible lending, your personal circumstances are taken into account.

Your credit score is calculated using information based on any credit applications you’ve made from your current or previous addresses, any history of debt, including any County Court Judgements (CCJs), Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) or bankruptcies. It also shows how you’ve maintained repayments to your credit cards, store cards, loans and mortgage.

These individual values are then added together to provide a final score which provides the basis for our decision. Every lender has a different way of calculating it, largely because they all have access to different information, but they also have different lending criteria. This is a system we use to help us decide whether we can lend you money and is also used by most other banks — the higher your credit score, the better your chances of being accepted for credit, at the best rates.

An unsecured loan isn't tied to any collateral, such as a car or house — so you'll need at decent credit score to qualify.

A secured loan is tied to an asset of yours as security. For example, you could take out a secured loan for buying a car – when you repay the loan the car is yours, but if you don't repay then the lender could seize your car.