The loan calculators
There are two loan calculators provided on the site:
1. the Quick Loan Calculator, available to all, whether logged in or not.
2. The Loan Calculator, available to logged in users with a Borrower membership.
The Quick Loan Calculator is designed to help the potential Borrower get an approximate idea of how much might be borrowed, for what term or duration, what the fees and monthly repayment amounts might be, and the APR of the loan. Various scenarios may be explored, quickly! Users do not need to be logged in to enjoy these facilities.
Here is a screenshot of the Quick Loan Calculator:
First you enter the amount of the loan required. In response you will see the Loan Flat Fee, the Percentage Fee and a guideline Compensation Fund contribution based on our average credit rating. This figure may be different for a real loan because we take into consideration your actual credit rating. You will also see, on the basis of the charges set out above, what amount will be disbursed to you after those fees and contributions.
You then select, from the two dropdowns, the highest interest rate (Target Rate), with one decimal place, that you would be prepared to pay for the loan. Bear in mind that the higher the Target Rate the more appealing to Lenders your Loan Request will become. You will then see the monthly repayment that will be required and the total amount repayable with interest.
However those figures will be for a loan of the minimum duration or term. You next select your chosen duration of the loan in months from the dropdown selection, or put another way, the period over which you wish to repay the loan. Then the monthly repayment that will be required and the total amount repayable with interest will adjust to the correct figure for the actual duration of your choice.
Finally you will be shown the APR relevant to that configuration of loan. You can then change or adjust any of the numbers and the calculations will be re-run on the fly.
Moving the cursor to the various areas of the screen will reveal relevant tooltips providing explanations of the entry boxes, drop down selections and numbers presented as shown here:
Loan Calculator is designed to help the potential Borrower get an idea of how much might be borrowed, for what duration and what the fees and monthly repayment amounts might be. Various scenarios may be explored.
Users need to be logged in to enjoy these facilities. This is because a registered user with a Borrower or Advanced Borrower subscription gains a real advantage. The Loan Calculator entries may be saved into an appropriate Loan Request without having to re-enter the information, and the Loan Request may be submitted at the click of a button.
The first part of the Loan Calculator is like this:
Just like the Quick Loan Calculator show above the Loan Calculator also offers tooltips throughout. Moving the cursor to the various areas of the screen will reveal relevant tooltips providing explanations of the entry boxes, drop down selections and numbers presented.
First you enter the amount of the loan required. In response you will see the Loan Flat Fee, the Percentage Fee and a guideline Compensation Fund contribution based on our average credit rating. This actual figures may be different for a real loan situation because in that case we take into consideration your actual credit rating. You will also see, on the basis of the charges set out above, what amount will be disbursed to you after those fees and contributions.
You then select, from the two dropdowns, the highest interest rate (Target Rate), with one decimal place, that you would be prepared to pay for the loan. Bear in mind that the higher the Target Rate the more appealing to Lenders your Loan Request will become. You will then see the monthly repayment that will be required and the total amount repayable with interest.
However those figures will be for a loan of the minimum term or duration. You next select your chosen term of the loan in months from the dropdown selection, or put another way, the period over which you wish to repay the loan. Then the monthly repayment that will be required and the total amount repayable with interest will adjust to the correct figure for the actual term of your choice.
Having completed the above you will see something like this:
The next part of the Loan Calculator is the Affordability Calculator and it looks like this:
The first part of the Affordability Calculator is for entering any existing loans details.
Select the Loan Type from the dropdown. Then enter the Provider of the loan, the bank, loan company, credit card provider, etc. Next enter the Interest Rate of that existing loan. Next is to enter the current Amount Owed or outstanding on the loan. Then enter the Monthly Payment followed by the number of months of repayments currently outstanding. Finally, check this box if the intention is to repay this existing loan out of the proceeds of the requested new loan from our lenders.
The small minus '-' and plus '+' on the left hand side beneath the area for existing loans, allows the removal of an incorrect existing loan line or the addition of another existing loan.
When two existing loans have been added it might look like this:
Next in the Affordability Calculator is the section for entering Monthly Income and Expenses.
In this section you must click the left facing arrowheads to "open" the section. The arrowheads, showing for the total boxes, turn downward pointing when the section is opened. You can only enter the details (no arrowheads beside the entry boxes), and you cannot enter any of the totals (arrowheads beside the boxes) as the totals automatically calculate from the detail entries. See screenshot below:
Enter as much detail and be as accurate as possible. In addition to the section sub-totals the Monthly Income and Expenses section also calculates the Available Income (sometimes called the Disposable Income).
When this section is completed it might look like this:
In addition to calculating the sub-totals and the Available Income it also calculates two well known debt ratios - the Loan Payment to Available Income Ratio and the Debt to Income Ratio (sometimes called the DTI Ratio). This site has limits of affordability set on each of these ratios. The Loan Payment to Available Income Ratio has a maximum of 40% and the DTI a maximum of 36%. If either of these ratios limits is breached the section will show "Test Failed" instead of "Test Passed" and the Loan Request cannot be submitted for approval. The borrower will need to request a longer loan term or a reduced loan amount to get a "Test Failed" back to a "Test Passed".
This section shows as follows:
Having changed any of the details entered the "Save Changes" button can be clicked and then the "Calculate" button can be clicked to recalculate the loan proposition as follows:
Finally, when the potential borrower has a loan request calculated that is as required, for a user with a Borrower Membership there will only be the "Save Details for Bidding Market Loan Request" offered with a checkbox for selection. For a user with an Advanced Borrower Membership there will be a choice of "Save Details for Bidding Market Loan Request" and "Save Details for Matching Market Loan Request" offered, each with its checkbox for selection. Please select which market this Loan Request will be submitted into by checking the chosen checkbox. When your selection has been made and the required box checked another button appears showing "Save to Loan Request" as follows:
The "Save to Loan Request" is clicked and the Loan Calculator details are submitted into the Create Loan Request form for the appropriate market.
There now will be some additional information to add in the Loan Request. Please click here to go to the Loan Request instructions.