agree with EGAC here. I had never banked with HSBC before in my life. The Bank was happy to set up new account and transfer money in one lump sum (which was my choice) at the same time. Took me about 5 weeks from interview to getting the money and account in my hands.
The £30k i got was unsecured and with no guarantor either. My situation when I applied - I had just finished atpl theory and holding ppl/imc/nt and 170TT and only working in a part time job earning about £80-100 a week. So their decision to give it to me unsecured was definitely not due to my present financial situation!
There seems to be a lot of local variations between branches. I first dropped into my local village branch and they had never even heard of the loan, I then phoned the local business centre in a near by town and arranged it all without a hitch. Got an interview arranged in 3 days. Was in the interview for 30 mins and 15 mins of that was filling in the application form. Then had a phone call 4.5hrs later saying I had been sucessful. I was very surprised as I had read stories on pprune of people having a 2 hr grilling and having to wait a week for a result.
The most annoying thing has been the Life Insurance. I had to have 2 meetings to get that arranged and fill in a beefy form including usual medical questions and another specialised avaition form that came through the post a week later to fill in and send back. Has been multiple time more difficult to arrange 30k worth of life cover over 11years than the damm loan its self
Unlike a normal loan, which is mostly referenced to your current finacial sisuation, this loan is very much down to interviewers/managers discression so making an impression is very important. I spent 2 weeks creating my 30 page business plan that I submitted that included info on my chosen FTO, course structure, full break down of all costs, potential earnings, state of the industry currently, future plans of various airlines, my contingency plan if it all goes tits up and a few appendices proving I wasnt making up all my figures
. I tuned up for the interview suited and booted with 2 copies of the doc for them to keep and basically let that do the talking with me on call to explain sections and answer any questions that came up.
Hopefully if they do streamline the process there will be less variation between branches which can only be a good thing. In the meantime I'd find a large branch, do your homework and go in smart and confident and give it your best shot!
