Just a few months ago, a person with a bad credit rating would have faced major obstacles if he wanted a personal loan, but that's all changed now because of the ongoing financial crisis, and people with bad credit can now get personal loans with an ease that they would only have dreamed about until just recently.



Having a bad credit score no longer means that you can't get a loan or a credit card because there are now lots of loan sources out there that will willingly lend to individuals with a low (FICO) credit score.

The acronym 'FICO Score' stands for, 'Fair Isaac Credit Organization' and it's a common measurement of a borrower's credit risk that's used by creditors. The final score is based on a borrower's credit history, plus many other credit factors, and the scores range between 400 and 850. A credit score of 700 or higher is excellent, 680-699 is good and 620-679 is OK and below that is poor or worse.

In fact there are three different FICO scores that are used by the three biggest credit bureaus, Experian, Trans Union and Equifax, and the big banks might use one, two, or even all three of them to check your credit worthiness.

The trick of course is in knowing how to find the small and less well known loan sources because they definitely aren't your major banks that are refusing to make loans whilst trying to suck taxpayer money from the government.

Fortunately, there are lots of small and totally legitimate lenders on the Internet that are perfectly willing to review credit applications on a case-by-case basis, and unlike the main street banks these lenders go beyond simply checking a credit score after which the borrower is often asked to put some form of collateral in place so as to lessen the lender's risk. Instead, these lenders make an excellent living by making loans to people that will hopefully turn out to be excellent borrowers, and are just down on their luck.

If your credit rating is shaky, you don't have collateral, and you're not looking for a loan to buy a home or a car then what you most likely need is an unsecured personal loan, and the icing on the cake is that most of the smaller on-line banks can approve such loans within 24-48 hours. Moreover, a large number of the smaller banks and lenders will make loans to people who don't own homes, and they won't ask for a cosigner or any form of collateral either.

The bottom line is that the old adages, "it's an ill wind that blows nobody good", and "there are two sides two every coin", show themselves to be true in the case of the present financial crisis.

Although large numbers of people have been greatly harmed by the present financial it has created wonderful opportunities that didn't exist just a few short months ago.