Want to cut the cost of your current loan? Sadly it isn’t as simple as it seems. Switching to a new loan, even at a lower rate can sometimes cost you more. This cost cutting guide will show you how to find the best new deal, and then use the unique loan switching calculator to see if you’ll really save.
The loan switching calculator
Please note, this article is about unsecured loans, i.e. the type sold by most high street lenders. The issues surrounding Secured Loans, products of last resort that most people should shy away from, are even more complex, so this article is a Secured Loan-free zone...
What are the problems with switching?
Sadly, switching loans isn’t like transferring a credit card balance; most loans are inflexible beasts usually designed to be repaid over the full term. Thus if you try and pay yours off early, a raft of hidden costs can skew any possible savings.
The main two types of charges are:
- Early Repayment Penalties
These are effectively fines of one or two months' worth of interest, charged when you repay the remaining balance early. So on a £5,000 loan over five years this could easily be £100.
Rule of 78
If your loan was taken out three or more years ago, there could be a further hidden penalty, due to the old-style ‘Rule of 78' interest calculations.
These were abolished for new loans from 1 June 2005, yet the British Bankers Association has confirmed that anyone with a loan from before then needs to check with their lender to see if Rule of 78 applies. This hideously complicated formula artificially allocates early years' repayments towards the interest, hardly decreasing the amount you owe.
This means attempt to repay in full early and there'll be much more left than you think. The earlier you repay, the bigger the problem.
Payment Protection Insurance
If you’ve got a loan, check whether you were sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) with it. While for some it’s useful protection, many have it unnecessarily due to pressure/assumptive selling; that’s because it’s often more profitable for lenders than the loan itself.
If you don’t think this applies to you, check as…
“One way PPI’s missold is by not telling people they’ve added it. As it’s part of the loan repayments, you could be paying £1,000s too much, without knowing it…”
What to do if you’ve got PPI
Do you need it? Check whether you really need the policy. PPI is supposed to cover your repayments, usually for a year in the event of accident, sickness or unemployment. Yet could you meet the repayments another way? Plus if you’re self-employed or unemployed it may not actually be covering you anyway.
Even if it is suitable, if you got the PPI from your lender, it’s likely you’re paying up to four times more than is necessary for it. So see if it’s possible to ditch and switch to save; full details in the Cheap Loan Insurance article.
Were you missold it? If you were sold inappropriate loan insurance, it’s possible you can get all your money back. There’s been widespread misselling of these policies; read the PPI Reclaiming guide for more.
Many people who’ve tried to repay loans with PPI early have been told it’d cost them enough to burn out a calculator. This is because the lender assumes you borrowed the cost of the whole insurance up front; and therefore you must pay interest on it too.
In recent years the regulator, the FSA, has come down heavily on this, so cancelling existing policies is much easier now. If you were effectively stopped from cancelling it the past you may have a misselling case.
When is it worth shifting?
The simple answer is… when it saves you money. The difficulty is calculating when that happens, as just getting a loan at a lower rate doesn’t always work; yet if you can find a cheaper loan than the existing one it’s worth plugging the details in the calculator below to see if you’ll save.
STEP 1: Find the correct info from your current lender
Before plugging your info into the loan calculator you’ll need to call your existing lender to ask it a couple of questions…
- ASK: What are my exact monthly repayments and how many months do I have left?
This allows you to work out, by simply multiplying the figures together, how much you’ve got left to repay. For ease of calculation, just enter the figures below.
ASK: How much it'd cost me to settle up right now?
What you want to know is how much it’d cost including all penalties, to repay the loan in full immediately this is called the 'settlement figure'.
STEP 2: Find the cheapest possible replacement loan
To switch loans, you'll need to borrow the 'settlement figure' from the new lender. As the interest rate you get depends on the amount you need to borrow, it's important to have this figure before doing the calculation. To find the cheapest loans for that amount read the cheapest loans section.
Yet if you just want to do this quickly, you can try various options in the calculator to find what rate you'd need to get, to be able to save.
STEP 3: Plug these details into the loan calculator
Do note the calculator assumes you will borrow the new amount over the same remaining number of months.
If I come into a windfall, should I pay the loan off?
A standard MoneySaving Rule of Thumb is always pay off any debts before stashing any money in savings (read Pay off Debts with Savings). In general this is true with loans too, though due to the repayment penalties you may be financially better off by sticking it in a high interest account and drip feeding loan payments out of there.
Eg If the ‘total repayment' figure of your loan is £5,000, yet to keep repaying it each month costs £5,100 in total, you only gain £100 by paying it off now. Stashing the loan repayments in a top savings account could earn you more (See Instant Access Savings). However, if in doubt of the calculations, always err on the side of clearing your debts.
The Cheapest Loans to switch to
Quite simply, provided you don't get Payment Protection Insurance, find the loan with the lowest APR (Annual Percentage Rate) of interest for the amount you are borrowing. For much more information about the current best deals read the full Cheap Loans Guide.
Do beware though, all the top loans compared below are 'typical rates', which means only 66% of those accepted actually need be given these rates; depending on your credit score you may pay a lot more (see lower credit scorers' loans if that’s an issue).
| Amount | Typical APR |
Lender |
Notes |
| Under £1,000 | Loans aren’t available, see the Cheap Short Term Borrowing or Credit Unions guides for alternatives . | ||
| £1,000-£1,999 | 15.8% |
Alternatives: For top credit scorers, loan marketplace Zopa* is cheaper. Read explanation of how it works. |
£2,000-£2,999 | 13.9% |
| £3,000-£4,999 | 12.9% |
||
| £5,000 - £7,500 | 8.8% |
Sainsbury's 8.8% |
Alternatives: YourPersonalLoan 8.9% (homeowners) |
| £7,500 - £15,000 | 8% |
Tesco (Typical 8%, but is 7.8% for some lengths/amounts) A&L* 8% Sainsbury's 8% (need free Nectar card)
|
Alternatives: Top credit scorers should look at loan marketplace Zopa*. Nationwide* 7.9% (for FlexAccount customers only) . |
| Over £15,000 | 8.2% |
|
Alternatives: YourPersonalLoan 8.9% (homeowners) |
| Over £25,000 | Maximum personal loan borrowing is £25,000. If you're borrowing more, be very careful, it's a huge commitment. You can combine loans, or add the debt to a remortgage, though that often means extending the term, more interest and securing the debt on your house. | ||
Want more loan options / got a poor credit score?
These cheapest loans are updated daily, if you want to see a list of many available loans then there are loan comparison services at Moneysupermarket* and Uswitch*, which give a wider range, though may miss some of the top payers above. Moneysupermarket’s comparison also gives you a rough credit rating assessment, and then factors this into the available loans.
Any new cheap loans will be in the Free Weekly MoneySaving E-mail
It's possible to use plastic loans to cut the cost further
Credit cards are a much cheaper way to borrow than loans; longer term borrowing at 6% is do-able. Yet if you already have a loan, shifting it to a credit card isn’t an easy operation. It is possible, although tricky, to do though.
Only attempt it if you’ve got a good credit score and, more importantly, are very money savvy. You can find full details in the Cheap Credit Card Loans guide. To calculate the saving by doing this, simply use the loan calculator above, and ensure you’ll make the same repayments to the credit card that you would’ve done for a loan.
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