Your Credit Rating and How To Check It

There is a batch of confusion surrounding United Kingdom credit ratings, credit scores, credit blacklists, credit reports, and credit files. This usher to your credit evaluation takes to give you the facts you need.

What's in a Credit File

There are two major credit mention agencies in the UK, Equifax and Experian, who keep credit data data files on virtually every grownup in the country.

Almost all companies that give you credit terms will provide information to one or both of these two credit agencies.

Therefore, your credit data file is likely to incorporate information on all your existent credit and loan arrangements, such as as personal loans, mortgages, credit and shop cards, bank accounts, etc. Inch addition, your credit record will incorporate information on any late or missed payments and the amount of the original debt still outstanding.

The credit mention agency files also incorporate electoral axial rotation information for your computer address and tribunal records relating to you. It is this information which allows prospective lenders to confirm your computer address and also see if you have got any outstanding CCJs (County Court Judgements).

Whenever a mortgage lender or other company is assessing an application for credit, they will check the inside information held on you by Equifax and/or Experian. The ground they make this is because, by law, they are not allowed to bespeak any information about you from any other companies with whom you have got a credit agreement.

Also, by contacting one of these two agencies they can derive access to your full credit history with just a single petition rather than having to garner the information from multiple sources.

Each clip a lender do a search of your credit file, that search will be recorded and added to your file, leaving a credit check "footprint". Therefore, it is easy for a prospective lender to see if person have been "shopping around" for credit, and this in itself could be a crucial factor in whether or not they hold to give you a mortgage.

Your credit data file will also include inside information of other people living at your computer address if they are financially linked to you, or if the credit mention agencies believe they are financially linked to you. In this way, other people's bad credit history can sometimes drag down your credit score. But if you happen you are wrongly linked to another individual, you can compose to Experian and Equifax and inquire them to rectify the mistake.

How can I see my credit data file and right any mistakes?

Under the terms of the Data Protection Act, the credit mention agencies Equifax and Experian are required to supply you with a transcript of the information they throw on you in tax return for a small disposal fee. At the clip of authorship (2004) the fee for each agency is £2.

Your inside information are supplied by post, but you can bespeak a transcript of your data file by telephone, station or email. Details or how to apply can be establish on the Equifax and Experian websites.

Remember that because some companies supply information to Equifax, some to Experian, and some to both, you volition need to tell transcripts of your data data file from both agencies in order to get a full image of your credit record.

Alternatively, there are online services that will allow you to experience a free credit score check, as well as download (for a fee) a transcript of your full credit report.

If, after having obtained a transcript of your credit file, you happen that it incorporates errors, you can take the matter up with Equifax and/or Experian and inquire them to rectify the mistakes. Full inside information of the process for correcting your data data file are available on the companies' websites and are also sent in the station along with the transcript of your credit file.

Credit scores, credit ratings, and credit blacklists

First of all, let's chase away a popular myth.

A batch of people believe that there is a "blacklist" you can stop up on if you have got a particularly poor credit history, and that if you are on this listing you will automatically be refused credit.

This is simply not true - there is no such as thing as a credit blacklist. If you have got been refused a mortgage or other word form of credit, the ground will be because your credit score was not high enough.

When a lender petitions information about you from a credit mention agency, they apply a mathematical expression to that information in order to give you a credit score. Different lenders will utilize slightly different factors to make the score.

Also, the definition of a good or acceptable score will change from one mortgage lender to another. Therefore, it is quite possible to be turned down by one lender but be accepted for a mortgage by another.

Given that you are potentially worsening your credit score every clip you near a lender about a mortgage and they run a credit check on you, and given that different lenders will have got different criteria for assessing your credit worthiness, it do sense to speak to the experts right from the start if you are looking to take out a mortgage but fishy you may be hampered by a poor credit record.

If you're worried that a poor credit record may impact your ability to obtain a mortgage or remortgage, you should take the clip to happen a mortgage advisor who specialises in determination mortgages and remortgages for people with credit problems.

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Copyright 2004 Saint David Miles. You are welcome to reproduce this article on your website, so long as it is published "as is"
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