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Credit scoring can be extremely complex and confusing for people who have never come across credit ratings before. Even if you don’t understand all of the detail around credit cards – and to be honest, you don’t really need to – most of us know that having a healthy credit score helps you get loans, credit cards and other credit products. Loans and mortgages may seem a long time off when you are a student, but it’s never too early to start thinking about steps you can take now to create a healthy credit history and make things easier when you finally get to the stage of buying property or taking out a car loan.

What Is a Credit Score?

In the most basic terms, a credit score is a grade given to you by lenders to decide how much of a risk you are.

If your credit score is very low, the banks might decide that you are too much of a risk. They may either refuse to deal with you at all, or only offer you products with much higher interest rates than they offer to customers with better scores. The three main agencies which manage credit scoring in the UK are TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian, and these operate independently from the banks and other financial organisations. Using a wide range of information, the credit reference agencies will assess all the information they have about you and come up with your credit score number. As each agency uses a different scale, numbers will be different on each site.

What Affects My Credit Rating?

The credit agencies look at a wide range of things when deciding how much of a risk you are. Perhaps the most important of these factors is your track record – have you made payments regularly in the past, indicating that you can be trusted with credit? Student loans are not included in this. They will also look at the amount of credit you have available to you, and how much of it you’ve used. You’re in a stronger position if you aren’t permanently living in your overdraft, with a maxed-out credit card. If you have made several applications for more credit in a short period then this might go against you too, as it creates the impression that you are in financial difficulties and desperate to access more funds.

Another of the main factors which affects students is whether you are registered to vote at the address where you are applying for credit. This often causes problems for students who are registered to vote at their parents’ address, but who apply for a credit card or mobile phone contract using a student hall of residence address.

Length of Credit History

Students often find they have a low credit score simply because the credit referencing agencies don’t have enough information to form an opinion on whether you’re a good risk or not. It’s never too early to start thinking about steps you can take to improve your track record with credit referencing agencies. Having a mobile phone on a pay monthly contract can help, especially when you set up a direct debit to make sure it’s paid every month on time without fail. Insurance policies for home or car where you pay monthly rather than in an annual lump sum are also classed as credit agreements. Managing these sorts of products well, never defaulting or making late payments, should help you establish a good track record during your time at university, which stands you in good stead for when you start work and think about taking out larger amounts of credit in loans or mortgages.

We’re all familiar with having to fill in forms when applying for a new job, attending interviews, and perhaps showing your passport to prove you have the legal right to work in the UK. Getting a new tenancy agreement on a rented property can seem like a similar process, with forms and evidence to be supplied. In many situations there is another level of checking too – the Adverse Credit Check. This mainly applies to people who are applying for jobs where they will be controlling accounts or have access to cash, but also to prospective tenants wishing to move into private rented accommodation.

Why Do Employers or Landlords Want to Check?

From an employer’s point of view, they want to make sure that people employed in jobs where they have access to other people’s money aren’t in a shaky financial position themselves. They are concerned that people who are struggling to make ends meet may be tempted to dip their hand into the till. In other situations, such as people who join the police or prison service, the concern is less about direct theft, and more about being targeted for blackmail.

Many positions in the legal and financial services industries have the legal requirement of a credit check before the employee starts.

From a landlord’s point of view, they want to make sure that anyone given a tenancy agreement is going to be able to afford the rent every month as managing tenants who can’t pay can end up costing the landlords thousands in legal fees.

Carrying Out the Credit Check

Employers or landlords can’t carry out a credit check without getting your permission first, and it’s usually clearly stated in the job advert if a credit check is needed. Each employer will have their own process for completing adverse credit checks, and most will use an external agency to help them. Usually, all you will be asked to give as a job applicant or prospective tenant is your name, date of birth and address, and to sign something consenting to the checks.

Adverse credit checks will look at your credit score as with any other sort of credit check. Employers aren’t really interested though in how much credit you have and how much you owe on your mortgage. Adverse credit checks look for any “red flags” on your credit history such as regular missed payments, defaults, county court judgements (CCJs) or other evidence that you are in financial difficulties. Every employer or landlord will have their own criteria for success or failure. Similarly, employers might be happy to overlook a few late payments for a junior position but will apply much stricter standards to senior level vacancies.

Soft Searching

Every time you apply for a new credit agreement like a loan or a credit card, the application appears on your credit file, whether the application is accepted or declined. Making lots of applications in a short period can make it harder to get credit as lenders get the impression that you are desperate. The good news is that adverse credit checks are known as a “soft search”, which means they will not appear on your credit file in the same way and will not affect your overall credit score.

Looking at your credit score is easy, using one of the apps or websites run by Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion. If you think there is something wrong on your file, then you can ask to have it corrected. Keeping an eye on your credit score over time can also help you track whether the decisions you are making have a positive or negative effect on you score.

Even if you don’t spend long thinking about it, your credit score can have a huge impact on your everyday life. Every financial choice you make will be affected by your credit score, and if your credit score is low, then you may be unable to get some of the better deals around. Credit repair companies market themselves as the answer to your problems but what are they and how do they work?

A credit repair is a commercial business and will expect you to pay for their services. They say that they can help boost your credit score and advertise widely. Often, you will see adverts for credit repair agencies on websites aimed at helping people cope with debt or promoting financial advice. You may also hear credit repair companies being advertised on local radio or promoted on social media.

What Do Credit Repair Companies Do?

The most common service which credit repair companies offer is to check your credit files and getting any incorrect or inaccurate information taken off your record. They will approach each of the three of the UK’s largest credit agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) on your behalf and request the data held about you. They will then check through the files and work out how to challenge any errors they find.

It is very difficult to come up with any hard facts about whether credit repair services work or not. There has never been any independent research done looking at customers’ starting credit scores, and how effective or ineffective the credit repair company was. It’s certainly true that if you have mistakes on your credit file which create a negative impression, removing them should improve your credit score. But this lack of hard evidence about the effectiveness of credit repair agencies makes it hard to work out whether you should use their services or not.

Is A Credit Repair Service Worth the Money?

Although credit repair companies may claim to have special expertise and know-how in rebuilding your credit score, the truth is that you can request your own credit reports and ask for errors to be corrected without paying a third party to do it for you. However, it’s also true that it can take a lot of emailing, making phone calls and sending letters to get errors corrected. Some people would prefer to have someone else take charge of the process and save them the hassle.

Credit Repair for People with Bad Credit History

We’ve explained how credit repair companies work by correcting wrong information or inaccuracies on your file. What credit repair companies cannot do is wipe information about missed payments, defaults, or County Court Judgements (CCJs) from your record, and you should be very sceptical of companies which say they can. If you know that your credit score is poor because you’ve defaulted in the past or taken out more credit than you can manage to pay back, then repairing past history is not a “quick-fix”.

The only way of repairing a poor track record which is down to poor money management in the past is to convince the credit referencing agencies that you’ve turned over a new leaf. Pay off old debts, show you can use credit responsibly, and make sure you are on the electoral roll. The good news is that even CCJs will drop off your credit file after six years, but the main point is that repairing your credit in these circumstances takes a while. It’s not instant as the credit repair agencies would make out. If your credit score is poor because of debts, seek advice from a debt charity rather than paying out more money to a credit repair company.

Back in 2008, the financial crash led to the loss of thousands of jobs, and the government having to step in and secure the future of banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland. When the causes of the crash were fully investigated, it was found that one of the main causes was what was termed subprime lending. In basic terms, this meant that the banks were offering credit to people or companies who were a precarious financial situation, and when energy prices started to rise in 2007, these bad risks started defaulting on their loan or mortgage payments.

One of the main consequences of the 2008 credit crunch was that the banks totally changed the way in which they approach lending decisions. It’s now all about affordability for the customer, not just at the time when the credit is taken out, but also in the future. Responsible lending is the term most often used by the financial services industry, but what does this mean from the point of view of someone thinking of applying for a new mortgage or credit card?

Importance of Soft Searches

The first thing to think about is that different lenders prefer to deal with different types of customers. Some banks, building societies or credit card companies for example target very high net worth individuals who earn £100k a year or more, so even if your credit score is as good as it could be, you are wasting your time applying for a credit card with them if you are in a minimum wage job. Similarly, one company may be willing to take a risk on someone with one or two late payments on their credit report, whereas another may not risk lending to anyone in that situation. One good way of working out whether you are likely to be accepted for a loan or other agreement is to carry out a soft search, on a site branded as an eligibility calculator or checker. These sites can’t ever give a cast iron guarantee that you will or will not be accepted but can give a general probability. Most sites will rank all lenders in order of probability, allowing you to quickly select the lenders which you stand the highest chance of success with. This is known as a “soft search” and won’t show on your credit record like a firm application for credit.

Factors Considered by Lenders

Apart from companies which target borrowers in a specific salary bracket, or who live in a certain location, there are some other more general factors which lenders will look when evaluating how risky you are as a potential customer.
The most important of these is your credit score. Your credit score and related credit history will tell a lender whether you are currently managing your money, and whether you have missed payments of been taken to court over not paying back loans in the past. You can check your own credit score by requesting your credit file from Experian, Equifax, or TransUnion, or by downloading one of their smartphone apps.

Many credit agreements, especially for larger amounts, will have an affordability checker questionnaire. Applicants will be asked about their income and outgoings, so that the lender can work out whether they are on a tight budget or have plenty of extra cash coming into the household. If the bank decides that your finances might be too stretched to meet payments if your situation changes, they might either decline the application altogether, offer a smaller amount, or increase the interest rate to cover the additional risk that you won’t pay back.

Banks and other financial institutions have never lent money no questions asked. Since the concept of credit began, they have always asked some sort of questions to make sure that the person who is being lent the money can afford to pay it back, and more importantly, will pay it back. We are all used to the credit checks which are run when we apply for a new loan, and many will have seen the adverts on television or online showing how easy it is to check your credit score using an app. What is less understood is the parallel process of fraud checking, which aims to help banks identify fraudulent applications.

CIFAS

The Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System, or CIFAS, was established in the 1980s and helps financial services organisations share information about people who have tried to make fraudulent applications for credit, or who have been caught involved in something like insurance fraud. They also hold information about people working in financial services businesses who have been found guilty of fraud in the past.

Identity Fraud

One of the main roles of CIFAS is to protect the banks and building societies against identity fraud. If a criminal can get enough details about you, including your name, date of birth, address and other key details, that might be enough for them to take out a mobile phone contract, loan or order goods on credit. The fraudster then disappears, leaving you with the debt for an agreement you never signed up to.

Identity fraud can have a serious effect on your credit score, especially if you are not in the habit of checking it regularly. Every time you – or someone pretending to be you – makes an application for credit, then this is recorded on your file. Lots of applications in a short period will negatively affect your credit score. If the fraudster is successful in taking out credit under your name and then fails to pay, then this will damage your credit score even further.

CIFAS and Fraudulent Applications

CIFAS is an industry body and aims to protect the banks and building societies rather than the individual. They look for patterns in applications to try to spot potential fraud, which is then flagged up for further checks. They are understandably cagey about how they go about this, in order not to give clues to the fraudsters about how to evade the system. CIFAS also hold information about convictions, bankruptcies and people who have had insurance policies cancelled which lenders can access.

Protecting Yourself Against Identity Fraud

Apart from being aware of not sharing personal details such as your date of birth online, one of the best things you can do to protect yourself against identity fraud is to keep an eye on your credit score. The main credit reference agencies – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – all have websites and apps to help you do this. You don’t need to be checking your credit score obsessively every hour; once a week or so is probably enough. If you spot any unusual activity on your credit record then take action right away.

First, tell your bank or other lenders about transactions or accounts which you don’t recognise. If you do see on your credit record that someone has been making applications for accounts in your name, report it to the police and get a crime number. Then contact CIFAS and ask for protective registration. This will put a big red flag against your name in the database, forcing banks and other lenders to go through an extra layer of checking to make sure it’s really you who is applying for a new credit card, not the fraudsters.

Apps such as ClearScore have made it easier than ever to check your credit rating instantly. Credit scoring is based on a huge range of factors, and your credit score can change over time depending on your circumstances. Credit scores are a measure of how risky the banks or other financial institutions think you are – will you pay back any money they let you have? In general terms, the higher the number, the better the credit score and the more likely you are to be successful when applying for a car loan or mortgage.

If on the other hand your credit score is on the low side, you might struggle to get a credit agreement at all. The good news is that there is lots you can do to affect your own credit score and get the numbers climbing upwards. Often, low credit scores aren’t necessarily because you’ve done anything wrong in the past; people who have never before taken out loans or credit cards will find their scores are lower just because they have no track record to be judged against.

Good Money Management

Perhaps the most important thing that lenders are looking for when deciding who to lend money to is someone who is responsible in managing their finances. They want to see someone who never struggles to make payments on a loan, who doesn’t make late payments and who doesn’t skip payments altogether. Being organised with your finances isn’t easy though and if you’re juggling work, kids, and lots of other responsibilities, it’s easy to take your eye off the ball.

We’d always advise setting up direct debits from your main current account to pay off a loan or credit card automatically. Once set up, the direct debit agreement will make sure that your monthly phone contract or loan repayment leaves your account on the same day every month. If you run into financial difficulties, then contact the lender straight away rather than allow a payment to be missed.

Borrow Responsibly

Overstretching yourself is going to increase the chances of you getting into difficulties. Lenders do look at affordability when assessing whether you should have another loan or credit card, but there is no compulsion to use all the credit you have been offered. Owing less than you have been allowed to borrow goes in your favour. Credit scoring firms can look at how much credit you have available across all loans or agreements, not just from one particular provider.

Don’t Chop and Change

Sticking with a few loans or accounts over a longer period is seen more positively than chopping and changing your credit card provider regularly. If you have had the same credit card or mobile phone providers for years and have never missed a payment, then this is going to give you more “points” than someone who has only had a credit card for six months and has a shorter record with the company. Checking your credit report online should also flag up any unusual activity on your record which could indicate identity fraud, enabling you to take instant action before a fraudster does lasting damage to your score.

Register to Vote

This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to boost a credit score. All lenders will make sure that you live where you say you do by checking against the list of registered voters. If they can’t find you, then you are likely to be declined straight away. Getting onto the electoral register is free and can be done at any time, just Google “register to vote” to be taken to the official government site.

Those adverts on television about “knowing your numbers” in terms of credit scoring prompted thousands of us to download apps onto our phones to track our credit score. Typically, the app will show some sort of traffic lights system. If you’re in the green, your credit score is healthy, amber means that perhaps there is some work to be done to improve matters, and red means that you might struggle to access credit. It all makes it very simple and straightforward, but putting a definite number on a good credit score isn’t nearly as easy as you’d think.

Credit scores are important if you are thinking about taking out a new mortgage or loan, or even applying for 0% finance for a new kitchen or furniture. If you have a good credit score, then you have more choice over which financial products to go for and will probably be able to secure better interest rates than someone who has missed payments in the past.

Credit Reference Agencies

Although your bank and other lenders do hold information about you, credit scoring is done by one of the three main agencies in the UK – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Each of these organisations does things different and will have differing information about you. Each will evaluate risk in a different way, which goes some way to explaining why you might get a different credit score number when you check on each of the three sites. Lenders usually deal with one of the credit referencing agencies, and each lender has its own policy for checking credit scores at one, two or all three of the referencing agencies. If you think that your score at one of the three agencies is much lower than it should be, then this could be because there are errors on your account. Ask the agency for your full credit file and check it for any errors. Mistakes can be corrected but it takes time, and you will be asked to provide evidence to support your claim; they’re not just going to make changes on your say so.

A ”Good” Credit Score

A credit score is only a general indication of your financial health, and each lender will make its own decisions about who to lend to, taking into account a wide range of factors. Having said that, it’s definitely true that people who have a good credit score are more likely to be accepted for credit than someone whose credit score is rated as fair or poor.

Each of the three main agencies has their own scale for rating credit scores. With Experian, for example, the maximum score possible is 999, whereas the Equifax scale only goes up to 700. This can lead to confusion. For example, a score of 600 would be poor on Experian’s scale, excellent on Equifax, and fair on TransUnion. Someone who scores upwards of 800 on Experian though, would similarly find themselves graded as good or excellent on the other two sites also. Your credit score number won’t be the same across all three sites, and it’s therefore more important to look at the band you fall into.

Improving a Bad Credit Score

If your credit is rated as poor, bad or even fair, you might struggle to access the best deals on the market and be forced to take higher interest loans pitched at “risky” customers. Try to improve your credit score by paying off old debts, getting onto the electoral roll, and creating some sort of reminder system to make sure you never miss a payment on any account or loan.

We all know that whether or not we are successful in applying for a loan, credit card or similar depends on our credit score. Many people though think a credit score is one of those things over which we have very little control, but this just isn’t true. There are lots of positive steps which you can take to improve an average or poor credit score, but on the flip side, there are also actions which will damage your credit score too.

Frequent Changes

If you keep an eye on your credit score, you will probably have noticed that your score dips a little when you open a new bank account or take out a new credit card. As you start to build up history with your new account by making regular payments or not going into an unauthorised overdraft, your score will recover. But if you decide to change provider quickly, opening a new account every few months, then your score might never get the chance to recover fully.

Appearing “Desperate”

Whether it’s the case or not, lenders are going to perceive someone who has maxed out their available credit as desperate or in serious financial difficulties. This could apply to you if you are carrying a big balance on a credit card and only making the minimum payments each month rather than trying to pay it off.

Similarly, applying for new credit agreements too often can damage your credit score too, even if you are accepted. Every time you apply for new credit, this is registered on your credit file and known as a hard search. A better way of working out your likelihood to be accepted for a new credit agreement is to carry out a soft search first, which will give an indication whether you are likely to be accepted or not.

Missed Payments and Financial Difficulties

If you miss payments, make late payments or have defaults recorded on your credit record, then this can seriously lower your credit score for as long as six years. Although it may still damage your credit score, it’s always best to talk to lenders and explain the situation with a view to renegotiating terms rather than just ignoring the issue.

Overstretching yourself and owing more than you can afford to pay back might mean you have to consider more drastic action, such as going bankrupt or getting an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement). Lenders might also go to court and have a county court judgement (CCJ) issued against you to try to force you to pay a debt back. Any of these issues can reduce your credit score to the minimum and make it difficult to open even a basic bank account. When taking out any credit, it’s important to think about not only affordability now, but how you would manage to keep making payments if your circumstances changed.

Lack of Credit History

If you’ve never had a credit card, a loan, or mortgage, then the banks simply have no information to base their assessment on, resulting in a low credit score. People in this situation can establish a credit track record in a range of ways, such as taking a mobile phone contract on a pay-monthly basis rather than pay as you go or applying for a basic credit card with a low limit, which they then pay off in full each month. Doing this every month should see your credit score start to climb, but it could take six months to a year of making regular payments before you see results.

If you’re in the habit of keeping track of your credit score, and it’s the same month after month, then it can come as a shock to see that suddenly your score has dipped. This never happens for no reason though. Although everyone’s situation is different, there are eight main reasons why your credit score has declined.

New Credit Application

Every application for a new loan, credit card or similar will leave a trace on your file. If you are just trying to shop around and look for the best deal for a new loan, head to a site branded as an eligibility checker or comparison site which will give an indication of what loans you may be offered without making an impact on your credit score. Your credit score will dip after you take out any new product, so give it a chance to recover before applying for another.

Credit Searches

This is a similar point to the one above. If you run multiple hard searches over a short period for a new financial product it can give the impression that you’re in a poor financial state and searching desperately. Only ever start searching for credit or applying for credit when you need to and can afford to.

“Red Flags” on Your Account

The most obvious reason for a dip on your score is a negative marker on your account. A new lender wants to deal with people who have a good track record of paying their credit back without having to be chased up. Making payments late, or missing payments altogether, can dramatically lower your credit score and lead lenders to decide that you’re too risky to deal with at all. If you’ve been a victim of identity theft, this can also damage your credit rating while you go through the steps to have the fraudulent applications taken off your account.

You’re “Maxed Out”

Lenders will look at a “credit utilisation ratio” which is just a fancy way of describing what percentage of your available credit you are using. If you are up to your limit on your credit card and living permanently in your overdraft, lenders are going to be unwilling to lend you more money and potentially make your already poor situation even worse.

Decreasing Credit Limits

If you’ve called a provider and asked that they lower your credit limit, you might think this would increase your credit score. In fact, it can have the opposite effect as it affects the ration discussed in the point above – you now owe a greater percentage of your total available credit. It’s usually better to keep the credit limits as they are, but just to keep your spending low.

Closing a Credit Account

As explained in the point above, this can affect your ratio. It’s usually best to keep old, and infrequently used credit accounts as a long history with one provider is going to go in your favour as you are showing your reliability.

Mistakes on File

Inaccurate information is going to damage your credit score. The good news is that if you spot a mistake on your file, the referencing agencies will correct errors if you can prove they’ve got it wrong.

Joint Accounts

If you share a bank account or loan with someone who has a poor credit record, then this could affect your credit score too. Simply living at the same address as someone with debt or being married to them shouldn’t affect your own score; it’s just joint loans or other credit agreements which could cause a problem.