First Direct are first again! (First Direct)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	First Direct
Date:	04/12/08 (292 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A loan that's easy to set up and convenient to repay

Disadvantages: None so far

I have been a customer of First Direct bank ever since they started and I honestly cannot fault them. Incidentally they came top in the survey done by Watchdog so I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so!

When we decided to buy our cottage last year we thought that we would be able to sell our house quite easily. Sadly this wasn't the case and because of the credit crunch we still own both properties although we have got tenants in the house now which does help a bit with the finances.

When we came to pay the deposit on the cottage we had to raise the 15% deposit that we needed without having the income from the sale of the house that we had been expecting. To top up the money that we had already saved we needed a loan of £14,000 and we began doing some research to find the best deal.

We were quoted various ridiculous interest rates and were asked to almost jump through hoops by some companies until the obvious struck me and I checked out First Direct.

As I said earlier I am a customer, which did make it easier, but all I had to do was log into my account and request loan information. They immediately told me, without asking me any further questions, how much they would be prepared to lend me! All I had to do was to say how long I wanted to take to repay the loan and I was then notified how much I would need to pay each month.

I looked at the details of their loans on the website (http://www.firstdirect.com/loans/) to see if there was any small print that I should know about and I also needed to find out if I could repay the loan early without much of a penalty too. The idea is that, when the house sells, we will redeem the mortgage on that property (obviously) and repay the First Direct loan before using the rest of the money to reduce the mortgage on the cottage to the minimum level possible.

The small print all looked OK and the early repayment fee was just £150 so I just logged onto the loan page, requested £14,000, told them I would repay over 7 years (£212.68 per month) and that was that. The money appeared in my current account within 24 hours. I was well impressed. The written information was in the post within a couple of days. I think from memory I had to sign a copy and return it to them.

At the time the loan was available at a fixed rate of 7.4% which I suppose sounds high now in the light of the current interest rates reductions but having said that the current rate available at First Direct is 8.9% for loans between £5,000 and £25,000.

I set up a direct debit from my current account in order to pay the £212.68 each month and I drew up a spreadsheet on my laptop to keep track of how much I have paid off, ready for the day when we sell the house! It is also nice to see that even though the loan has only been in place for about 15 months we have already paid off over £2,000.

So there you have it - a very simple way to apply for and get a loan. As usual a big thumbs up to First Direct!

Summary: A great loan from a great bank