Eligibility checker

Definition

An eligibility checker looks at your credit rating and personal circumstances to see what finance packages you could qualify for and whether or not you will be successful with your application.

What does an eligibility checker actually do? 

All finance packages are assessed based on your credit rating and personal circumstances. Today, it’s easy to find out what your credit rating is. But these changes have only happened recently, and not so long ago you would have to pay a fee to see what your credit rating was.

That meant a lot of people would apply for finance packages without knowing just how likely they were to be approved. This would cause problems as, if you were not eligible and you were refused by the finance provider, your credit rating could have been affected. Meaning that when you applied for your next finance package, you could have been refused or been charged more for the agreement than you should have been.

Now that consumers can check their credit rating for free, doesn’t mean that some people don’t still apply for a finance package without seeing if they will be approved or not. An eligibility checker allows you to put in the details for your application to see if you would be approved or not before you actually apply. Allowing you to save yourself time and prevent any negative effects to your credit rating.

Eligibility checkers are often provided by the finance provider directly, but you can find some that will allow you to compare across many providers to see where you would be approved.

What can I do to make myself more eligible? 

Eligibility checkers primarily work by looking at your financial situation and your credit history. So you can start by getting your finances in order. Make sure you are paying off all your outstanding debits and finance payments on time, as late payments are a sign that you are a risk as a customer and so will make you less eligible.

You can improve your credit rating by improving your traceability. Joining the electoral roll is a great way to get started with this, as the credit check agencies who examine your credit file will use this to check your address history. 

If you have a lot of debt or outstanding payments, you may want to consolidate them. Being able to demonstrate you can pay off your finance packages is a good way to demonstrate your worth as a potential customer.

How does applying for finance packages affect my credit rating?

Unless the finance provider conducts a soft credit search on your credit file when you make an application, then every individual application is recorded on your file, whether you were approved or refused. 

The issues is if you apply for lots of finance packages over a short period of time. Because each of them can be recorded on your file, a finance provider may look at them and see you as being desperate for credit. This can suggest that you are in a difficult financial situation and so might not be a responsible customer, even if that’s not the case. So an eligibility checker can prevent this from happening by guiding you to the providers who will accept your application.