Understanding our Personal Loan rates
Explore Tesco Bank's Personal Loan interest rates and find the best loan for you.
What do I need to know about personal loan rates before applying for a loan?
When you're searching for a loan, it's important to understand how loan rates work before you apply. This will help you compare different lenders to find the best loan for you.
Here's what you need to know about personal loan rates.
What is APR and how can I use it?
APR (Annual Percentage Rate) tells you the yearly cost of borrowing money over the term of the loan, including any fees or charges. This percentage figure lets you compare loan offers from different lenders. The lower the APR, the less it costs you to borrow money.
APR example
A lender may offer you a loan of £10,000 over 3 years with an APR of 5.5%.
The 36 monthly repayments would be at £301.36, making a total repayable of £10,848.79 (£10,000 borrowed and £848.79 in interest and fees).
Another lender may offer you a loan of £10,000 over 3 years with an APR of 7.0%.
The 36 monthly repayments would be at £307.79, making a total repayable of £11,080.40 (£10,000 borrowed and £1080.40 in interest and fees).
What is representative APR and how can I use it?
Representative APR can be used to compare the total cost of your borrowing with other lenders.
When a loan is advertised with a representative APR, this means that at least 51% of customers receive the same rate as the representative APR. This is a standard requirement across all UK lenders.
So, lenders offering the lowest advertised representative APR won't necessarily give you the best when you apply; you'll receive a personal APR based on your personal circumstances. This could be the same or higher than the representative APR.
Because of this, it's helpful to check your eligibility with different lenders to compare loan offers before you apply for a loan.
Representative example
Representative 6.4% APR, based on a loan amount of £10,000, over 5 years, at a Fixed Annual Interest Rate of 6.2196% (nominal). This would give you a monthly repayment of £194.35 and a total amount repayable of £11,661.00.
This representative APR applies to loans of £7,500 - £25,000 over 1 to 5 years. We also offer loans between £3,000 - £35,000 and have terms available between 1 to 10 years.
Will I get the representative rate when I apply?
When you apply for a loan, you'll be offered a personal rate based on the amount you want to borrow and your circumstances. The maximum APR we currently offer is 34.5%.
What impacts the APR I am offered?
- The amount you want to borrow
- The length of the loan term
- The purpose of the loan - what it's for
- Your credit score (a lower score will usually mean a higher APR)
- Tesco Clubcard holders get a lower rate
Use our loan calculator to see what rate you could get
Use our loan calculator to tell us how much you want to borrow, and we'll show you an example of what you might repay or check eligibility with no impact to your credit score. Clubcard holders will get a lower rate.
FAQs about our Loans
Anyone can apply for a loan as long as they’re a UK resident and aged 18 or over. When you apply we’ll ask some questions about your circumstances to check that we can offer you a loan.
If you’d like to see how likely you are to be accepted before applying – and without impacting your credit score – use our Loan Calculator and hit ‘check my eligibility’.
Representative example
Representative 6.4% APR, based on a loan amount of £10,000, over 5 years, at a Fixed Annual Interest Rate of 6.2196% (nominal). This would give you a monthly repayment of £194.35 and a total amount repayable of £11,661.00.
This representative APR applies to loans of £7,500 – £25,000 over 1 to 5 years. We also offer loans between £3,000 – £35,000 and have terms available between 1 to 10 years.
The rate you’re offered may differ as that depends on the amount you apply for and our review of your circumstances. The maximum APR you could expect is 34.5% APR.
Yes, we do a credit check when you apply for a loan.
You can find out how likely you are to be accepted first without affecting your credit score by using our Eligibility Checker. This runs a soft search on your file and keeps your credit score safe.
If you're approved and you're eligible to digitally sign, you’ll most likely get your loan within 24 hours, but please leave up to 48 hours before calling us.
In some cases we might not be able to accept your application straight away. In that case we’ll need to get more information from you which can take 5 to 10 days for us to make sure everything is okay before we approve your application and send you the funds.
You’ll pay the same amount each month by Direct Debit on a date you choose.
Your first payment will be taken one month after you get your loan unless you’ve been accepted for a payment break in your application.
No, our loans are a fixed rate which means your monthly Direct Debit payments will be the same every month until your loan is paid off. Nice and simple.
If you make overpayments towards your loan, then you can always choose to reduce your monthly payments instead of reducing your term, which of course would mean you could pay less each month. Though remember, you usually save more on interest by reducing the term.
When you apply for a loan you may be eligible for a 2 month payment break at the start of your loan. This means you won’t start paying your loan back straight away.
Interest will be charged during the payment break and your overall loan period will be extended by 2 months, which means that you’ll pay an extra 2 months' interest.
If you’re struggling with your payments throughout your loan and feel you need a break, we can still help. Visit our financial difficulty page to find out more.
Yes, there are 2 ways you can do this:
By making extra payments
You can do this at any time during your loan without paying any fees. These overpayments will go towards reducing the length of your loan (unless you ask us to reduce your monthly payments instead). This means there’s less interest to be charged, which means you could save money overall. There are various ways you can make these payments.
By paying your loan off in full
You can pay your loan off in full anytime. You’ll need to pay a 2 month interest charge for doing this, but you could save money on interest overall. You can find out how much it would cost to settle your loan early, and how much you could save, at any time by asking us for an Early Settlement Figure.
Yes, you can apply to borrow more once you’ve made 8 consecutive monthly payments on your existing loan.
You can find out more about borrowing more on our existing customer page.
If you miss a loan payment we’ll automatically try to take the payment again within 10-14 days.
If you're struggling to make your monthly payment amount, please don’t panic, we’re not here to add to the stress, we’re here to help. All you need to do is reach out to chat about your situation. Our page on financial difficulty tells you more about what we can do to help and how to get in touch.
If you don’t get in touch, and end up falling behind on your repayments, there could be charges for late or missed payments. So it’s important that you reach out to us as soon as you can.
The APR is the total cost of borrowing, as a percentage of the amount you owe, over a year.
The APR is calculated from the annual rate of interest plus any upfront fees. It gives you a way to compare the cost of different loan and credit offers.
The annual rate of interest is the amount of interest that will be charged on your loan, as a percentage of the amount you owe, over a year.
Our loans are provided by Tesco Bank, PO Box 27014, Glasgow, G2 9FE.
Tesco Bank is a trading name of Barclays Bank UK PLC. For more information on what this means please go to tescobank.com/transfer-scheme.
Want to speak to somebody about our Loans? We're here to help
Have a question or need help applying? Our friendly, UK-based customer service team is here to help.