Any lender in the world will carry out a credit search on you before deciding whether to give you a loan. The difference with us is that we dont base our decision on it, we just do it to make sure you're not bankrupt or on an IVA (sorry, as much as we would love to help these guys, there's nothing even we can do).

With your guarantor it's a little different. We have to credit check them to make sure that they have a good enough history to be trusted with the responsibility of being your guarantor. In both cases a footprint is left showing that a search took place, but this isn't a big deal.

The whole point of FLM is to improve our customer's credit ratings. If you miss a payment it will go down on your credit file as a bad mark. If you make a payment it goes down as a good mark. The more good marks, the better your credit rating, the more chance you have of getting more money, at a cheaper rate in the future.

So basically, make your payments on time and it'll all be good.