Credit Reports

Financial Chat
21

If you have a Capital One credit card you can also get your Equifax information and I believe if you have a Barclaycard you can get your Experian score.

22

Thanks, I didn’t know that. What I actually meant was, an overall picture of who reports to where. I should have been clearer.

I have a good rating with 2 out of 3 of them but the 3rd is much lower. The only difference seems to be their lack of knowledge about my record of long term credit. So presumably if I applied for say, a new mortgage there’s a 1 in 3 chance that the lender will look at Noddle and turn me down

23

Every lender has their own criteria to judge someone’s creditworthiness. The headline rating shown to us by credit reference agencies are not not useful and lenders usually don’t even look at those.

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24

Equifax

Equifax fined by ICO over data breach that hit Britons http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-45574163

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25

That’s really helpful, thank you :sunglasses:

26

Not sure if anyone knew that there is a fourth Credit Agency now - http://www.crediva.co.uk/statutory-credit-report/

Not applied to them so don’t know what info they hold. I think your Statutory Credit Report is free now following GDPR though.

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27

Do we know if there are any plans for Monzo to report to other agencies?

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28

I would recommend against using these as they rely on scamming & advertising to make their money, which can especially affect the most vulnerable who might be conned into signing up for one of the advertised “deals”.

Instead just request a statutory credit report from the CRAs directly. By law they have to provide it to you for free or an insignificant fee (last year I believe it was around 2£, but now at least Equifax gives you free statutory reports online) and it isn’t tied to any advertising or anything. It’s also a bonus since they give you the raw data a lender actually sees instead of meaningless & misleading score.

29

So again, reviving an old thread as it might be the most fitting place

Today I got an alert from ClearScore about recent soft searches. I went to look and there are a bunch of insurance quotation searches from yesterday (all for companies I don’t recognise + Aviva) and a couple of searches from 118118 Money (is that what they’re called?) from two days ago

The problem is, I didn’t make any of them… should I be concerned?

30

Could you have used a service like clearscore marketplace that likes to do soft searches to show you what you are eligible for? They tend to cause a lot of soft searches on the same day.

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31

I had a look on MSE on Saturday but that was for credit cards, not insurance… :thinking:

32

They are the likely cause then, maybe you missed an opt out or they just do everything?

33

Do you have a car insurance renewal coming up soon and have you used a service like Compare the Market or GoCompare? They sometimes save your details and run price checks to try and get you to use their service again.

34

118118 do credit cards. I had them on mine once and I had no idea why, and I had done any searches either.

Clearscore were sort of useless and just assured me it wouldn’t affect my credit score. Which kind of was not the point.

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35

Is there a reason why after moving house every credit agreement seems to be removed from my ClearScore report and then re-added?

Not that it matters much but my score tanked over 200 points because of this now.

36

Not sure about the removing/re-adding but I know mine tanked last time I moved. Always had a top score and never been denied credit but after moving in 2018 I got denied an iPhone XS on finance at Apple, checked my score and it was absolutely destroyed lol.

37

The electronic roll is what broke mine for some reason

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38

That could have been what happened with mine, I probably wasn’t on the ER at my new house at the time as it was only a month after moving.

39

Why do people care about the fictional score? :man_shrugging:

It’s created by the respective CRA (each have their own maximum) and is purely a marketing gimmick as no one sees it but you. Not even prospective lenders.

Anyone doubting that it’s fake should consider why you are able to boost your score by playing the odd game within their app.

Providers have their own criteria and rating system.

The main general good elements for credit is being on the electoral roll, longevity of accounts, and no missed payments. You don’t need a score to keep those in check.

40

Thanks! I do hope I get added to the ER soon – I got a 12-month tenancy and I need to have bought a place by the end of it! So the credit report shenanigans don’t help.

I know, and the score itself doesn’t bother me as much as the removing and adding accounts that appears to be happening, exactly because of your last point.

It wouldn’t look good to have a bunch of accounts that all reported until June 2024 and then a bunch more that only start reporting from July 2024. Make it look like some catastrophic event happened.