Establishing a credit history can be an unexpectedly tricky thing – to get a loan consumers need to demonstrate a past history of managing with debt well. To manage debt well, entities need to extend loans to consumers. Since the inception of credit, the above catch-22 has been an issue, but under normal circumstances, it has been a solvable one.

Unfortunately, the last seven or eight years have not been regular circumstances.

While the roots of the 2008 financial crisis are myriad and complex – at its center was a lending crisis brought on by financial institutions and consumers enthusiastically working together to create a bubble in the housing market that literally flattened the global economy when it burst.

Unsurprisingly, the immediate result of the meltdown was a crackdown – both institutional and regulatory.