Credit/financing process

1. A method of assisting a borrower in obtaining a loan, the method comprising:

• (a) receiving, over a network, personal information of a borrower, said personal information including financial information of the borrower, and including information regarding objectives of the borrower in seeking a loan, said personal information obtained, at least in part, via an online form completed by the borrower;
  
  (b) selecting, based on said information regarding objectives of the borrower, underwriting criteria to be used to generate a credit grading for the borrower;
  
  (c) programmatically generating the credit grading for the borrower using the selected underwriting criteria, wherein the selected underwriting criteria includes objective criteria used by one or more lenders capable of providing the loan;
  
  (d) outputting information regarding the credit grading, and information regarding a plurality of lenders capable of providing the loan, to the borrower; and
  
  (e) subsequently to steps (a)-(d), in response to receiving authorization from the borrower, sending the credit grading and at least some of the personal information of the borrower to a particular one of said lenders selected by the borrower;
  
  wherein steps (a)-(e) are performed by a third party evaluator that does not provide the loan, and is performed such that none of the received personal information of the borrower is released to any of the lenders without specific authorization from the borrower, whereby the method enables the borrower to assess its borrowing ability and to select a lender for providing the loan without exposing any personal information to any of the lenders, and wherein the method further comprises the third party evaluator receiving, from a lender, software that automatically applies the selected underwriting criteria to information of the borrower.