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Personal Loans Vertical Overview

Personal Loans support multiple integration surfaces (Platform/Leads/Prefill). This section covers Prefill API only and focuses on the user journey, routing, and handoff behavior (not field-level API spec).

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What the Personal Loans Category Is

Personal loans are typically unsecured installment loans used for a wide range of purposes (e.g., debt consolidation, credit card refinancing, home improvement, major purchase). Prequalification is used to provide users with a rate check experience without requiring them to complete a full application upfront. Key implications for integrators:
  • Purpose matters: the selected loan purpose influences routing, lender eligibility, and the user’s expectations.
  • Outcomes are not guaranteed: some users will not receive prequalified options.
  • User experience should minimize friction: prefill is designed to reduce re-entry of data and accelerate time-to-results.

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Integration Surface: Prefill API (Personal Loans)

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What Prefill Does

Prefill enables partners to transfer user data to Credible so it can be used to pre-populate the Personal Loans prequalification form. The partner then redirects the user to Credible using a short-lived, ready-to-use link returned by the API.

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When to Use Prefill for Personal Loans

Use prefill when:
  • You want Credible to host the prequalification form experience.
  • You DO NOT collect the full amount of required information Credible requires to submit a personal loan request. Often partners are missing key pieces of PII such as Last-4-digit SSN, etc.
  • You want a fast integration with a clean handoff.
  • You primarily want to reduce user friction and improve completion rates.
If you need server-to-server offer summaries and lifecycle tracking, use the Leads API / Platform API (covered separately).

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End-to-End Prefill Flow

+------------------+         +------------------+         +---------------------+
| Partner Frontend |         | Partner Backend  |         |   Credible Site     |
+------------------+         +------------------+         +---------------------+
        |                             |                             |
        | 1) User enters basics       |                             |
        |    (amount, purpose, etc.)  |                             |
        |---------------------------->|                             |
        |                             |                             |
        | 2) Backend calls Prefill    |                             |
        |    (meta + personal data)   |---------------------------->|
        |                             |<----------------------------|
        |                             |  { uuid, link (short TTL) } |
        |                             |                             |
        | 3) Redirect user to link    |                             |
        |---------------------------------------------------------->|
        |                             |                             |
        | 4) Credible loads Personal  |                             |
        |    Loans prequal form       |                             |
        |    (prefilled + partner msg)|
        |                             |                             |
        | 5) User completes flow      |                             |
        |    and views results        |                             |