Applying to several banks at once

What a credit enquiry is

Every time a lender assesses you it records an enquiry against your name at the credit bureaux, and the next lender can see it. One is routine. Four in a month is a pattern, and the pattern a credit committee reads is somebody being turned down repeatedly — whether or not that is what happened.

Why the answers differ anyway

Each bank's credit policy is its own and none of it is published: how much of your income it will allow against an instalment, what rate it stresses you at, whether a credit card limit counts or only the balance, how it treats commission, drawings or a seasonal business. Two banks reading the same payslips land in different places routinely, and the spread on a self-employed application is wider still.

So shopping around is not pedantry. It is frequently the difference between a decline and an approval, and between two rates half a point apart.

The way round it

One application, one set of documents, put to several lenders together. That is what an origination platform is for. You answer the questions once, the same pack goes to each desk, and the offers come back to be compared side by side instead of one at a time over six weeks.

What it costs you

Nothing. The bank pays an origination fee when the finance goes through. You are not charged for the application or the comparison, and nothing is added to what you borrow to cover it.