Agreement in Principle

An Agreement in Principle is sometimes called a mortgage in principle or a Decision in Principle, but they all mean the same thing. It helps you check how much you could borrow before you apply for a mortgage. It’s based on an initial assessment of your financial situation and involves a soft credit check, so it won’t affect your credit score. 

If you get an Agreement in Principle with us, it usually lasts for 90 days. This gives you a timeframe to find a property while knowing your approximate borrowing limit. 

You can apply for an Agreement in Principle online, through the Barclays app, or by speaking to a mortgage adviser. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. We’ll do a soft credit check and let you know how much you could borrow to help you get started on your property search.

No, it doesn’t guarantee that you can get a mortgage with us, but it’ll let you know whether we'd be willing to lend the amount you need. If you apply for a mortgage, we'll check your income, credit history and financial circumstances, and consider whether you can afford the mortgage payments both now and in the future.

No, we do a soft credit check for an Agreement in Principle, which doesn’t impact your credit score. This lets you assess your borrowing options without any effect on your credit history.

You might still be able to get an AiP even if you've had some money problems in the past. Depending on your circumstances, we might need to speak to you before we offer you an AiP. You can visit our mortgage lending rules page for more information.

When you apply for a mortgage, we'll ask for detailed information about your credit history. Factors that could affect your ability to get a mortgage include:

• Having a bankruptcy order within the past 6 years
• A County Court Judgment for debt that you haven't repaid within the past 6 years
• Being turned down for a mortgage or having a home repossessed in the past 6 years
• Having less than 3 months' employment history.

We’re committed to protecting your personal data. We’ll use your information for a few different purposes – for example, to manage your accounts, to provide our products and services to you and others and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. We may also share your information with our trusted third parties for these purposes. You can read more detailed information on the how and why we use your information page, including the rights in relation to your personal data, and our legal grounds for using it. 

To process your application, we’ll supply your personal information to credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies, and they will give us information about you, such as about your financial history. We do this to assess creditworthiness and product suitability, check your identity, manage your account, trace, and recover debts and prevent criminal activity. These agencies may in turn share your personal information with other organisations. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment. Once you open an account with us, we will share account data with the credit reference agencies on an ongoing basis.

If false or inaccurate information is provided to us and fraud is identified, details may be passed to credit reference and fraud prevention agencies to prevent fraud and money laundering and to verify your identity.

The Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) describes how the three main credit reference agencies in the UK each use and share personal data. The CRAIN is available on the credit reference agencies’ websites.

www.transunion.co.uk/crain

www.equifax.co.uk/crain

www.experian.co.uk/crain

See more on how these agencies might use your information.

You can ask us for a copy of any of the documents or information mentioned above.