Car finance on a Temporary Work (International Relations) visa.

It's often worth exploring, and the answer turns on the practical shape of your file rather than the visa number by itself. What matters is how long the visa runs, whether there is stable employment and documented income sitting behind it, and how comfortably the repayment fits your budget. Send us the grant notice and we'll give you a real answer instead of an encouraging one.

Your grant notice names the stream. The streams do differ — in length, in conditions and in what happens at the end — which is exactly why we won't summarise them here and why Home Affairs is the place to check the detail. From a finance point of view the stream matters mainly through its effects: the expiry date, the work arrangement and the income it produces.

There's no universal figure, and anyone giving you one is quoting a single lender on a single day. As a general principle a longer remaining period makes the file easier to place and a very short one makes it harder. We'd rather look at your actual expiry against the term you're after than have you plan around a number we invented.

It happens frequently and it isn't automatically wrong, but it deserves a deliberate decision rather than a default. The question to ask is what the balance will be at the point your arrangement ends, and whether selling, refinancing or continuing to pay from wherever you are next would be manageable. A shorter term or a larger deposit both reduce that exposure.

It makes the assessment more involved rather than impossible. Lenders want income they can verify and rely on, so the useful thing is evidence — the document that sets out the entitlement, and bank statements showing the money arriving on a consistent rhythm. Tell us how you're paid at the outset; it's the detail most likely to change which lenders we approach.

Yes, and more so here than on an ordinary application. We won't attach a percentage to it, because that varies by lender and by file. What a deposit does is reduce the amount borrowed, reduce what the lender stands to lose, and bring the loan balance under the car's value sooner — which matters a great deal when your visa has a defined end.

The contract stays with you. Repayments remain due, the vehicle remains security, and leaving the country doesn't release you. Selling the car to clear the balance is a legitimate plan, but it takes time and rarely returns what you paid, so it works best when you've paid the loan down far enough that the sale actually covers it. Think this through before signing, not in your last month.

No. We compare your position against lender criteria before anything is formally submitted, so no enquiry is recorded on your file while we work out where you fit. That's worth more than it sounds — approaching several lenders directly and collecting declines leaves a trail of enquiries that makes the next attempt harder.