We're a marketplace, not a lender.
We match Canadians with bruised credit to lenders who actually serve that market — without the predatory tropes. Here's the whole machine, in plain English.
Three movements.
- 01
You check your eligibility.
Three short sections — about you, your situation, and consent for a soft credit signal. About four minutes start to finish. We don't ask for your SIN at this stage. We don't pull your full credit report.
- 02
We match against partner lenders.
Your info gets compared against the eligibility criteria of every lender in our partner network. Some will be a match. Some won't. We don't waste your time showing you the ones that won't.
- 03
You apply directly with the lender you choose.
If there's a match, you'll see the lenders, what they offer, and roughly what to expect. You apply with the one you pick — Fresh Start's role ends at the handoff. You're in control of the application from there.
What we don't do.
The lending industry has a long list of pattern behaviours that erode trust. We wrote ours down so you can hold us to it.
- We don't lend money ourselves — we're a marketplace.
- We don't work with predatory lenders (no 999% APR storefronts).
- We don't pull your full credit at the eligibility stage.
- We don't sell your information to anyone.
- We don't call you uninvited.
How Fresh Start Loans makes money.
Lenders pay us a referral fee when you apply with them. The fee doesn't change your rate or your terms — those are set by the lender, not us. We're paid the same regardless of which lender you choose, so we have no incentive to push one over another.
Nine common ones.
If yours isn't here, the eligibility check itself is the answer to most of the rest.
No. We run a soft credit signal that's invisible to your credit score. A hard pull only happens if you choose to apply with a specific lender — and only that lender pulls.
Yes. We use bank-grade encryption for everything you send us. We're CASL- and PIPEDA-compliant. We never sell your info, and we only share it with lenders you've explicitly consented to share it with.
Most of our partner lenders work with scores in the 560–700 range. Some work below that. Some require collateral. The eligibility check sorts which fits your specific situation — including bankruptcy or consumer proposal histories.
A discharged bankruptcy doesn't disqualify you here. Some of our partner lenders specifically work with post-bankruptcy borrowers. The time since discharge matters — generally, the more time, the more options.
A soft check is a credit inquiry that's recorded but not visible to other lenders, and doesn't affect your score. Pulling your own credit report is a soft check. So is the kind we do at the eligibility stage.
Usually within one business day. If you apply during weekday business hours, often within a few hours. We don't keep you waiting — if there's no match in our network, we tell you that fast too.
We'll tell you. We won't sell your info to second-tier debt-relief or payday-loan operators. If you didn't qualify, sometimes the right move is to work on credit for a few months and come back. We can point you to free resources for that.
Yes. Several of our partner lenders accept government-benefit income as primary income. The amount you can borrow may be lower, but you're not excluded.
A credit-builder loan locks the money in savings while you make payments — you don't get the cash up front. A regular installment loan gives you the money up front and you repay it monthly. Both build credit. Different purposes.