Credit Reports

If anything in your credit report is out of date or gives a misleading picture of your willingness or ability to repay a loan, mortgage or credit card, it can affect your chances of borrowing money. If the right borrower is not approached, it can lead to outright rejection by some lenders.

What Will a Credit Report Actually Reveal About Me?

A credit report will reveal information that includes your address, court judgments and your current and past credit commitments.  Anyone reading the report will be able to see quite quickly whether you are a good credit risk or not.

To ensure that your credit report is as accurate as possible it is important that you are on the electoral role, as lots of financial institutions will refuse to consider giving you credit if your credit report shows that you are not registered to vote at your current address.  This is one very efficient way for them to check that the name and address you give them is in fact correct.  If you have recently moved into your home you will need to also give the address of your previous home.  Often if you can also prove that you are now living where you say you are (with a utility bill or such like), then a lender will accept this.

Any credit check that has been made on you by any company will also be noted on your file, but no note is made as to whether the application was a success or note.  As an example, you could have shopped around for the best offer on say a credit card, or a small loan, without realizing your enquiries have been registered as multiple applications on your credit report.  These should normally show as quotation searches. If they are down as applications, lenders could think that you are desperate for money, have over-extended yourself or even that fraud is being planned.  These will obviously cause any lender concern, and are things that you should be aware of.

If you have lived with, but are now separated from a partner who has since run up debts, and still have a joint account, then his or her payment behavior could be affecting your credit report.  Any person with whom you have a financial link (referred to as ‘financial associate’) will have their credit details shown on your credit report.

People will sometimes worry that if a previous occupant of their house had serious debt problems, then this will somehow affect their own credit.  This is not the case at all, any credit report is against a person, not an address, and as mentioned previously the only financial details that will be revealed of yours and any financial associate you may have.

Equally if someone within your family applies for credit, then any bad credit history you may have noted in your file will not be shown in theirs, unless they are a financial associate of course.  This will also apply if someone in your house has bad credit and you want to apply for a loan, their credit will not affect yours.

The credit report is sent to whoever requested it (with your permission of course), and then if you are applying for credit of some sort, the company you applied to will have their own way of judging whether you meet the criteria they set down.  Sometimes one company may turn you down, yet another will give you credit.

If you know you have had arrears or any other form of bad credit then always ensure you apply to a company that specializes in a bad credit loan, as they are able to source the correct loan or mortgage for you, even taking into account your bad credit history.

If you ignore this and apply to a High Street Lender, you will usually find that you will be turned down, and again this will be noted on your credit report for any future lender to see.