How We Make a Loan Decision

As a community, member-focused business, Hoot makes sure that every loan application is assessed on its merit and according to individual circumstances.

There are three stages to making the loan decision, all based on the information you provide.

Once we have been through this process we will email you with our decision. If you are successful you will be asked to sign the loan agreement and complete any other information we need. If you are not successful, we will tell you why and give you further information depending on the reason we have turned you down.

Every loan is looked at by a person and your individual circumstances are always taken into account. There are no automatic machine-made decisions at Hoot.

Three stages of making our decision

Loan Decision

Affordability

Affordability is about being able to meet your household expenses and credit commitments, be able to pay the Hoot repayments and still have something left over for savings or emergencies.

We will look at your bank statements or Open Banking link to check your income and outgoings to make sure you can meet the repayments.

As a responsible lender we cannot offer a loan to someone if we think they cannot afford it.

Credit Rating

We check your credit report to see how you are managing any debt you already have.

We will see what other credit you have like credit cards, loans, home credit or finance and make sure you are repaying those. This tells us that you are managing your credit.

Missed payments, defaults, debt collectors or CCJs will tell us that you are not managing your credit well. It may not stop you getting a loan with us but it will affect the decision.

We will not lend to you if doing so makes your situation worse, or if your credit report tells us that you are not doing anything to repay other debt.

Your Individual Circumstances

Once we have checked affordability and credit report we will look at the other information we have to help us make the final decision.

If you are already a member, we will look at whether you have had a loan with us before, and if you have repaid it with no missed payments. We will also look to see if you are saving with us too. Saving is an important part of being a Hoot member. If you are successful in getting a loan, you will be expected to save a little whilst you are making your repayments.

We will also look at any documents to verify your identity and to confirm any income you sat you have. We may ask you more questions before making the decision just to be sure we are lending responsibly.

Which Loan is Right for You?