Santander Consumer car loans for non-prime buyers

Who Santander Consumer is

Santander Consumer Inc. is the Canadian arm of Santander Consumer Finance, part of Spain's Banco Santander, one of the largest banks in the world. In Canada it grew out of Carfinco, an Edmonton-based non-prime auto lender the group acquired, and it continues to lend through dealerships nationally, including Ontario and Quebec.

Its place on our bench is the file one step below what Scotia Dealer Advantage or iA Auto Finance will tier well: a discharge within the last several months, a repossession with the balance recently settled, or a file with several collections and a new, steady job.

The files Santander approves

These are the profiles we place with Santander most often.

• Bankruptcy discharged within the last year, with the certificate and a new income in place.
• A completed consumer proposal with little credit activity since.
• A past repossession or voluntary surrender, once the deficiency balance is settled or written off.
• Several accounts in collections with steady current employment.
• Employment income with at least three months on the job; some self-employment on bank statements.

What Santander looks at

Current income and its stability come first: pay stubs, a job letter with an employer phone number, and a bank statement will be verified. Then the months since the last credit event and whether anything has been paid since. Santander is more tolerant of a recent event than the bank-owned lenders, and correspondingly more attentive to the down payment and the vehicle. It keeps the vehicle budget conservative so the payment stays comfortable, and it checks age and mileage against program limits.

What a Santander approval looks like

A tier, a maximum payment, a vehicle budget and a term. Rates are higher than the bank-owned non-prime lenders, in line with the depth. The loan is open and reports monthly to Equifax and TransUnion. We treat a Santander loan as a bridge: twelve to eighteen clean payments typically qualify a buyer for a refinance or a trade into a better-tiered lender, and we plan for that from the start.

How to improve your odds with Santander

A few things move a deep file from conditional to approved.

• A down payment. On a deep non-prime file it is usually the difference.
• Settle or document any deficiency balance from a repossession; an unresolved one is the most common blocker.
• Bring the discharge certificate or certificate of full performance on day one.
• Accept a modest vehicle now. The next one, on a rebuilt file, will be the one you want.

Santander where you live

Santander lends in both provinces. Insolvency paperwork is federal and read identically on both sides of the river; the purchase follows provincial rules, with the SAAQ inspection required if a Gatineau buyer takes an Ottawa vehicle. We handle the inspection so the approval is not held up by it. In Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador the same program applies; the purchase follows that province's rules, with HST at 14 or 15 percent, a current provincial inspection and registration at the provincial registry, and we handle that paperwork the same way.

When we place a file elsewhere

If the credit event is more than a year back and payments since are clean, Scotia Dealer Advantage or iA Auto Finance usually return a better tier, and we present there first. If the file is deeper still, or the income is cash-heavy, EdenPark and Iceberg Finance are the remaining options. We read the file before presenting it, so you are not declined anywhere that was never going to approve.