Personal loan providers within the UK are feverishly restricting the availability of their products as outlined in a newly released BOE report.
Data drawn from a recent survey of the credit markets reveal that access to a wide variety of personal loan products, has become markedly limited since the start of 2008. Not surprisingly, the national credit squeeze lies central to the helm of the trend, with increasingly tight lending stipulations forcing some 90% of providers to take fewer risks and to be far more selective in their approach to providing finance to the British public.
The report also predicts that lenders will continue to refuse high volumes of personal loan applications throughout the course of the next quarter, with some analysts predicting “blanket” rejections well into the back end of 08.
However, large-scale rejections are by no means exclusive to the personal loan arena as separate figures also show that financers of credit cards have also become atypically choosey, with acceptance rates for the last quarter well below average.
Commenting on the trend, one expert remarked that the credit squeeze would have a very similar effect on the loans industry as it is currently having on the mortgage industry, and we should expect to see the availability of cheap credit abscond over the coming months.
