One impact of the global credit crunch in the world's financial markets is starting to materialise in the UK. Lenders of loans in the UK often rely on the wholesale markets to rasie the cash for their loans and the worries about lending to high risk borrowers has meant that loan provders have had to "clean up" their act in order to secure the funds to keep their businesses going.

When we say "clean up" we mean they need to arrange a higher percentage of their loans to borrowers with cleaner credit records. In the past, applicants with less than clean credit histories would have been accepted for loans and just charged a higher rate to offset the higher risk they carried. These applicants are now being screened out more often which helps to satisfy the more risk-averse fund providers. The way the lenders do this is impose stricter criteria when assessing loan applications.

So an applicant with one or two black marks on their credit record, who may have been accepted for a loan 6 months ago, may now find they can't get a loan deal at all.

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