It can be: an installment loan (fixed-term loan with fixed monthly payments), an installment sale (sale for which you pay the price in several payments), a lease (rental contract for an asset, with a purchase option on it), a credit line (capital reserve that you use as needed, often with a card), a bridge loan (short-term credit used to advance funds pending the receipt of a large sum repayable in one go).
Access to consumer credit is generally open from an amount of €2,500 and can go up to an amount of €75,000. The APR (Annual Percentage Rate) is essentially the selection criterion to which the consumer should pay particular attention.
APR and consumer loan
The APR is a variable legal data updated every 6 months by the National Bank of Belgium. Be careful, this does not mean that your APR varies every 6 months. Indeed, as soon as your consumer credit contract is signed, your APR (ultimately what determines your interest rate on the borrowed sums) remains completely fixed throughout the duration of your credit contract.
Currently, the APR defined by the National Bank of Belgium varies within a range from 11.5% to 15%. This means that the minimum and maximum APRs are defined by law and do not vary from one broker to another. However, your broker can make a commercial gesture and grant you the minimum legal rate according to the criteria they will define themselves in the relationship they maintain with their clientele.
It is essentially the duration of your credit and the amount borrowed that will cause the APR to vary. Thus, the larger the amount, the closer the APR will be to the legal minimum. The shorter the credit duration, the closer your APR will also be to the legal minimum.
There are credit formulas that allow for lower APRs, but in this case, the borrower is no longer in a consumer loan formula but rather a dedicated loan such as: car financing, a work loan where the borrower will have to provide proof of their purchase (purchase invoice, work estimate, etc.)
Other important points
Once the contract is concluded, the law grants you a 14-calendar-day reflection period during which you can withdraw from the credit by means of a registered letter sent to the lender or any other means of communication accepted by the lender and indicated in the contract.
Finally, it is useful to know that in the event of early repayment of the credit, the borrower is reimbursed for part of the interest which is not due since the credit duration has been shortened.