Applying for a loan with Amigo?
You’re in good company.
Update on my application
First things first, if you’re just after an update on your application and your loan hasn’t been paid out, you can text the word ‘STATUS’ to 07860004427.
We’ll get straight back to you with an SMS alert letting you know where we’ve got to. This is only available for borrowers on live loan applications.
Who can apply for an Amigo Loan?
Almost anyone can apply for an Amigo Loan as long as they meet our criteria:
- a UK resident
- aged 21-75
- not on an active bankruptcy, IVA, or equivalent or a Debt Management Plan
- have a minimum income of £800
- and are able to make the loan repayments and pass our affordability checks.
You’ll also need a friend or family member who trusts you to be your guarantor.
When you make an application we’ll carry out a credit check and will ask you to complete an online budget plan. Don’t worry, we don’t mind if you don’t have the perfect credit score, we just want to make sure the loan repayments are right for you and your situation.
So far, we’ve already lent to over 375,000 people who may have struggled to get loans from elsewhere.
Yes, we can accept people discharged from bankruptcy. If your credit file hasn’t been updated since you were discharged, you may need to send us a copy of your discharge papers. If you don’t have a copy, you can get one from the trustee who handled your bankruptcy or from the court where you were made bankrupt.
If you’re currently bankrupt, we won’t be able to lend to you but will be happy to consider any applications once you’re discharged.
We can only offer loans to people who live in the UK - that’s England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. As much as we’d love to help, other countries have different rules.
If you live in the UK for at least 2 months a year then we could still accept you.
How much can I borrow?
With an Amigo loan, you can borrow up to £10,000. As long as it’s affordable for you, we’ve got you covered.
Next, choose your loan term. Our loans can be taken out between one and five years depending on what suits your budget.
1Starting your application
We’ll need to know a bit about you. That means your name, date of birth and your contact details (for when we send you information about your loan).
We’ll then ask you to read the T&Cs and your credit agreement. Once you’re happy with everything, click the box and sign your agreement electronically.
Providing an electronic signature is an easy way of signing your agreement online. Rather than writing your name with a pen, you simply click the yellow box that says “I accept & sign this agreement”. That means no paper forms or unnecessary delays. As this is the same as a ‘wet-ink’ signature, it’s important you don’t sign until you’re completely happy with what you’re agreeing to.
2Completing your budget plan
Next, we’ll ask you to provide a quick breakdown of your finances. We want to make sure this is the right loan for you, so we’ll take down your income and outgoings. This will show us if the loan payments are affordable alongside your other financial commitments.
You don’t need to be employed to borrow from Amigo Loans. Though we’ll make sure you can afford the loan payments alongside your normal living costs, it doesn’t matter if your income is from wages or pensions (or somewhere else still). It just needs to be regular and guaranteed. It's important to know, we cannot accept an application if your sole income is benefits.
If we’ve asked you to send in any documents, it’s nothing to worry about - it just means we couldn’t verify some information during our online checks. By sending a clear picture of a document confirming this information, we can hopefully get the application across the line.
For a full guide on sending us any files, we’ve actually written up a comprehensive guide over here. It covers everything from knowing which document to send, what it needs to show, and how to send it.
3Your guarantor’s application
Once done, we’ll need your guarantor to complete their part of the application. They can do this right there with you, or you can send them a link so they can do this in their own time.
Your guarantor may need to make any payments towards the loan that you don’t, so we’ll ask them to complete a budget plan too. This makes sure any payments they do happen to make are comfortably affordable.
Amig.me/amigo.me is a unique link we’ve made to make your online application easier. You’ll usually get these on two occasions (though there can be other situations too): if a loan broker introduced you to us, or when your guarantor needs to fill in their own details. All that you (or your guarantor) need to do is click the link or copy it into your web browser, and you’ll be taken to your application page.
We’d always expect the borrower to make the monthly payments and we’ll try to avoid looking to the guarantor if we can. Even if the account falls into arrears, we’ll try to come to an alternative arrangement with the borrower to get things back on track directly.
Only if this isn’t possible and the account remains behind will we need to ask the guarantor to step in, attempting payment from them once the account falls behind by 15 days. We’ll only ever ask a guarantor to pay in line with their agreement and in the best interests of the account. This prevents any negative side-effects of the account remaining behind such as the arrears increasing and the loan term extending.
Guarantors can also make payments towards the account whenever they choose, and can choose to become the ‘primary payer’ if they do want to make the regular monthly payments on behalf of the borrower.
4A quick phone call
We’ll also give your guarantor a quick call to confirm their details and to arrange paying out the money. If we can’t verify any of your own details or there are any issues, we may also need to call you to finalise the application. But don’t worry - we’ll make this quick, easy, and stress-free.
If we do need to call you, we’ll aim to do this within 48 hours of accepting your guarantor. After that, we’ll only call you if the account isn’t up to date or is at risk of falling behind.
It’s important that you (and your guarantor) understand the terms of the agreement you’re entering into, which means being able to communicate with us over the phone in English. If you can’t do this without a translator, then we can’t be completely sure that you understand the responsibilities of taking out an Amigo loan. It doesn’t need to be your first language but the last thing we want is for you or your guarantor to get back in touch in 6 months time because you weren’t aware of what you were agreeing to.
Final checks - sit back, relax, let us do our thing
Once everything’s done, we’ll complete our final checks (dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s). We’ll be in touch if there’s anything further we need from you, or we’ll send you a text once the loan is paid out. The money is paid into the guarantor’s bank account for them to transfer on to you.
We aim to pay out every loan as soon as we can once the guarantor has been accepted. Some things that could slow your application down are:
- If we’re not able to speak to your guarantor when we call.
- The property your guarantor owns is either in Scotland or Ireland (our checks on these addresses can take a little longer).
- You’ve applied over a bank holiday or weekend, in which case we’ll process your application as soon as we’re back in the office.
- We need something from you like proof of ID or a bank statement.
The best way to make sure your application goes through smoothly is to simply enter your details as accurately as possible, and make sure your guarantor is fully on board. Leave us to do the rest and we’ll get back to you if there’s anything we need.
We pay the money into the guarantor's bank account to protect them from fraud and to make sure they know exactly what’s going on with your loan. Your guarantor can then do a bank transfer, give you the cash or write you a cheque - whatever works for you both.
Want to cancel your application? Don’t worry, we won’t be offended. If your loan hasn’t been paid out, just get in touch letting us know that you’d no longer like to go ahead and we’ll put a stop to it there. If you change your mind again, we can always resume the application for you later.
You can also cancel your application by replying to any of the messages we may have sent you already.
If your loan has been paid out, you’ll need to repay the loan including any interest accrued in this time. Once done, the account will be closed.
Questions?
If there’s anything we’ve not covered already, have a look below.
As part of your application, we ‘ear-mark’ a payment of 1p from your debit card. This doesn’t actually take a payment but holds the 1p for a short time before releasing it.
This lets us know your card details are active and assures us you won’t have any issues making your payments once the loan is paid out. We’ll run this quick check again every 9 months when the loan has been paid out to make sure your payment details are still valid.
By law you have a cooling-off period of 14 days once your loan has been paid out. If you change your mind about the loan, you can just tell us within 14 days and return the full loan amount within 30 days, including any interest accrued in this time. Once done, your account will be closed.
You can change the loan amount and the loan term at any point before the loan is paid out. Just email us at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help.
If your loan has already been paid out, we won’t be able to make any changes. It’s always worth double checking how much you need to apply for before going ahead.
If you’ve been given an Amigo PIN in a letter, you can use it to log in quickly to your Amigo application. Visit www.amigoloans.co.uk/pin to enter your PIN, complete your application and sign your credit agreement online.
If you’ve received a loan application for someone at your address, there’s no need to panic. It’s usually just marketing and means someone has put down your own address by accident.
We’ll always verify a customer’s address before paying out their loan, so we’ll know they don’t live there before the application goes any further. Our loans also aren’t secured against any property so even if it did get paid out, it wouldn’t go on to affect you.
If you receive a letter in your own name stating that a loan has been paid out or a signature made without your knowledge, please call 01202 629 161 immediately (Monday - Thursday 9 - 6pm and Friday 9 - 5pm).
As a responsible lender, we’ll need to allow six months to pass before we can accept a new application. We’ll be here for you in future in case you do ever want to apply again.
Anything we haven't covered?
Check out our guides below:
