How Do I Obtain My Credit Report?
What is a Credit Report?
A credit report is, as the name suggests, a record of your credit activities. It also contains information, taken from the electoral roll, which can be used to identify you to a lender as living at a certain address, and with whom. Bank, building societies and other lenders compile details of the payments and transactions on your various credit agreements – secured or unsecured loans, credit cards, etc. – typically throughout the life of each agreement, and these are passed on to the three main credit reference agencies in the United Kingdom, Experian, Equifax and Callcredit. The balance of each credit account is recorded, along with the regularity of repayments and the status of the account – that is, "settled", "active", "defaulted", or "delinquent" – so that lenders can make an assessment of your creditworthiness. If you have court judgments against you because of unpaid bills, or have been declared bankrupt, that information too, remains on your credit report for six years from the date of the judgement or bankruptcy order.
Obtaining Your Credit Report
There are a large number of companies offering credit ratings, but the largest and most popular in the United Kingdom are Experian and Equifax. Legally, both companies are obliged to provide you with a one-off credit report for a nominal, statutory fee of £2.00, but you must request this in writing, providing your full name, date of birth, your current address and previous addresses for the past six years. Contact details for the two companies are as follows:
Experian Equifax plc
Consumer Help Service Credit Advice Centre
PO Box 8000 PO Box 1140
Nottingham Bradford
NG1 5GX BD1 5US
Tel: 0870 241 6212 Tel: 08705 143 700
www.experian.co.uk www.equifax.co.uk
Please note however, that although a telephone number is quoted in each case, neither credit reference agency will allow you to request your credit report over the telephone, nor will they discuss it with you in this way. Both companies also offer additional products, available via their respective websites, whereby you can obtain unlimited access to your credit report and credit rating online.
Bear in mind that privacy is paramount when it comes to your credit report – your credit report is available only to you and to any lender to whom you give consent via an application for credit – which is why you cannot see the credit report belonging to someone else. Credit reference agencies are extremely thorough in this respect, and may request additional identification if there is any doubt about your identity.
It is advisable to obtain a copy of your credit report if you are considering taking out further credit, even if you are confident that your credit rating is high. You still need to make sure that the information contained in your report is accurate, up-to-date, and free from any signs of attempted identity theft or other fraudulent activity. If there are errors, either in terms of numerical data or spurious associations with other people, you are entitled to contact the lender in question and ask for the information to be corrected or removed. Similarly, if you identify any discrepancies which appear to be suspicious or fraudulent, make sure that you contact the lender(s) concerned as soon as possible.
A fairly recent development in the world of credit reporting is the sharing of so-called "white" data – data which does not indicate any wrong doing on your part, but illustrates the general, everyday running of your credit accounts – to prevent irresponsible lending. That's the theory of it, at least. In practice the availability of this data means that credit marketeers know if you customarily pay off your credit cards bills in full, or you just make the minimum repayment, or you always, sometimes or never, advance cash on your credit card, etc.., and gives them some way of assessing so-called credit card "tarts", who habitually transfer their credit card balances from one 0% introductory deal to another.
If this is you, one thing that you can definitely do to improve your credit rating is to remember to close the old credit card account once you've transferred the balance to the new one. Many borrowers forgot to do so and are eventually left with a mountain of available credit, which they may never use, on various accounts. The fact that they do not use the credit is largely immaterial to lenders, who see it as a major potential liability in any case and assess the risk of lending to such a borrower accordingly.