There are plenty of reasons why you may need to find out more about personal loans that you have had in the past. Some people want to see who their old creditors are. Some people want to look at how far they have come in terms of managing their finances.

The problem is that it isn’t all that simple to find out details of past personal loans. Unless you kept old correspondence from the lender (you should always do that!), you only have a few options available to you.

Read your credit file

Perhaps the simplest way to find out about past loans is to dive into your credit file. This is assuming that the loan was paid off under 6-years ago.

Your credit file will list all repayments/missed payments for your loans over the last 6-years. This means that you should be able to get a pretty solid idea of your credit history here.

This is one of the best methods because you are going to be able to see all of your loans at a glance. You are also going to be able to see how each loan is having an impact on your credit history. You will even be able to see (with a small amount of time lag) how much you still have to pay back on the loan.

Checking your credit file is dead simple and there are plenty of resources that you can use. It may actually be worth checking your credit file regularly anyway. This way you will be able to have any mistakes on the credit file rectified.

Remember, this is only going to work if the loan is under 6-years old.

Read your bank statements

If you can’t see the loan on your credit file, then you may want to try reading through your past bank statements. This method can be somewhat hit and miss, though. This is because banks may not make statements available after a few years. This means that you may not even be able to request bank statements if your personal loans are really old. If you have access to the paper statements then this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

There are two things that you can be on the lookout for on your bank statement:

• Money coming in from the lender. This way you will know when you were loaned the cash and when.

* Direct debits that make payments to the lender.

The big issue here is that you are not going to be able to see any missed payments on the loan. You also will not be able to see how much interest you paid on the loan. You can probably work it out, but this may require you to go through years of bank statements and that can be quite a hassle!

Contact past lenders

If you can remember who your past lenders were, then you may want to try and reach out to them. They may not always be able to help you. However, there is a good chance that they may be able to provide you with past details of your loans.

Obviously, the big issue here will be trying to work out who your past lenders were, particularly if you have had a few personal loans. You can find out some of the information from your bank statements, though. NowLoan.co.uk who provide guarantor loans and personal loans suggest you use bank statements to trace past loans.

The major benefit of reaching out to your past lenders is the fact that they can provide you with all of the details of old personal loans. This includes the amount of money they have loaned you, the interest you paid, payments, and even missed payments.

Do bear in mind that some lenders may not just hand out this information. That is for security purposes. Some may not even store the loan information for long after it has been fully paid off.

Conclusion

Obtaining details of past personal loans or isn’t going to be easy. The older the loan is, the more difficult things will be. Generally speaking, once the loan has been paid off for over 6-years, it is going to be nigh on impossible to get the information that you need. Your only hope here is that you kept hold of past paper bank statements.