Direct lender or broker comes first
The first split in any loan comparison is who actually sends you the money. A broker takes your details, passes them to a panel of lenders and hands the decision back. A direct lender takes the application itself and issues the loan, so there is one party to deal with when a payment goes wrong or a statement is disputed.
Acierto.com is recorded as broker. The rest of the field you are comparing sits on the other side of that line. A-Bank, ABA Bank, ABB Bank, Abe Student Loans, Abhi, ABN AMRO Zakelijk and Absa each describe themselves as direct lender in their own published terms, as do 5in5, Absa Bank Mauritius, Absa Ghana Instant Loan, Absa Mozambique, ACB Grenada Bank, Acba credit organization, Access Bank Gambia, Access Financial Services, Aave and Aave GHO / Compound Treehouse.
Broker status does not make a lender unsafe, and direct status does not make one safe. It changes who you complain to. With a broker, the lender that declined you is often unnamed, so keep the broker's written confirmation of which panel was used. With a direct lender, read the 5in5 and ABB Bank reviews for how complaints were handled before you pick one.
How to check a licence number
A licence or register number tells you more than any logo on a website, because a register entry names the authority that supervises the firm and shows whether it may lend in your market. Copy the number, open the named authority's public register and search the firm. An empty result is a reason to stop before you upload identity documents.
Some numbers only make sense inside the country that issued them. NCRCP7 is a national credit regulator registration, and AI12000440 - IK16000002- CS20000017- CV12000005 is a financial services commission registration covering several licence categories for the same firm. Both are searchable, both are worth the minute it takes.
Look at the prefix as well as the digits. A lender that describes itself as a bank usually shows a banking register entry, while a non-bank lender shows a finance company or credit register entry. A mismatch between the marketing description and the register type is a question to ask, not a detail to skip.
Worked examples of a checkable number
A-Bank publishes an entry on the National Bank of Ukraine list of supervised institutions, 16. That number is the one to paste into the central bank's own directory rather than into a search engine, because the directory also shows whether a licence is active.
Abe Student Loans publishes 2542102, a national mortgage licensing system number for the United States. Student lenders in that market are checked against that system, so the same lookup you would run for a mortgage broker works here.
Abhi lists SC/NBFC-219/APL/IFS/2021-02, a non-bank financial company licence issued under the securities and exchange commission. Acba credit organization publishes 4, a central bank number that is short enough to be easy to misread and easy to mistype when you search.
Absa records NCRCP7 against its corporate information. Compare that with the Absa review before you apply: a valid registration settles whether the firm is supervised, while the review settles whether you want to deal with it.
Where supervision is less obvious
A commercial bank licence does not tell you who supervises it unless the regulator is named. ABA Bank publishes C.B. 14 dated 7 December 2023, and the issuing regulator is not named alongside it. Ask the lender which register to search and which body handles a complaint, then check the answer yourself.
Abroad, the register may sit with an authority you would not look at first. Absa Bank Mauritius holds AI12000440 - IK16000002- CS20000017- CV12000005 with the financial services commission, so a customer outside that market should confirm whether the lender accepts applications from their country at all before checking anything else.
Other lenders in the field describe what they are without publishing a register number, including ABB Bank, Absa Ghana Instant Loan, Absa Mozambique, Access Bank Gambia, Access Financial Services, ACB Grenada Bank, Acba credit organization, Accessifi and Achieve. For those, the direct question is simple: which authority licenses you, and what is the number?
What a broker's registration does and does not cover
Acierto.com publishes J-3208, a registration with the Dirección General de Seguros y Fondos de Pensiones. That registration speaks to the broker's own conduct in the market it operates in.
It says nothing about the lenders on the panel, and no broker can. Before you accept an offer, run the licence check above against the actual lender named in the agreement, including its own country of operation. A familiar brand name is not a substitute for a register entry.
Read example figures as a shape, not a quote
Regulated lenders usually publish a representative example, and it is the cheapest starting point for comparing products. Abe Student Loans publishes an example for its undergraduate loans showing a monthly principal and interest payment on a set repayment schedule. That tells you the shape of the product: a set monthly outflow that clears the balance by the end of the term.
ABN AMRO Zakelijk publishes a representative example for its business credit, showing a limit drawn for a short period and the cost for the opening month. Short drawdowns on a revolving limit behave differently from a term loan, so compare them separately in the Business loans rankings.
An example is one scenario, not a quote. Change the amount, the period or the rate and the payment moves, often sharply for variable rates. Use the example to see which fields drive the cost, then request a written personalised quote before you sign. The Abe Student Loans and ABN AMRO Zakelijk reviews cover how the product was explained at application.
A short routine before you apply
Work through the same checklist for every lender, so one product is not judged on softer evidence than another. Confirm whether you are dealing with a direct lender or a broker. Find the licence number and the named regulator, then search that register. Read the representative example and note which fields change the payment. Check complaints handling and cooling-off terms in the terms document. Only then send documents.
If your credit history is the obstacle, weigh that against cost rather than accepting the first offer. The Loans for bad credit ranking shows which lenders serve that group, and the Buy now, pay later comparison covers short fixed-cost borrowing where a loan is not the right shape at all.
Regulation is the floor, not the whole decision. A supervised lender with a clean register can still price a loan badly, and an unregulated one can still be honest. Use the register to remove risk you cannot assess, then use fees, examples and reviews to choose between what remains.