Credit report help

magentadreamer

I spent today having a bit of a financial clear out, I cancelled 3 credit card's I'd not used in ages -no balance on them etc. Then signed up to credit expert on the 30 day free trial out of curiousity.

I applied for a 9 month BT 0% card a few days back to help pay for a holiday. I intended to pay off large amounts of the debt till I thought why not save the money -I've got £500 ( back pay I got two days ago) and thought why not save that plus any other money I get and then pay my card off in full when the 9 month was nearly up -obviously I will make min payments. After a search of instant access accounts I spoted ICICI Hisave account as recommended by Martin. I applied for the savings account I was going to pay the initial £1 by cheque to open the account,then transfer in the £500. I got an email from them, asking for confirmation of my identity which is normal when you open a savings account. BUT what really disturbed me was they wanted a photocopy of my passport plus a credit card/utility bill signed either by my bankers or my solictor - I emailed them back saying I didn't have a solictor and wasn't willing to pay for one to sign forms just so I could open up a savings account that would at most have about £1k in it! I asked for the application to be terminated.

NOW when I had a nose arround my credit report from Credit expert I find ICICI have done a check on me with a note saying checked for money laundering purposes!!!

Can someone please tell me will this effect my credit score? I'm a pay on time person who's held the same current account for over 20 years ( yes i know i should change it!!), lived in my house for 8 years, on the electoral roll and have 3 savings accounts an ISA, and two online accounts which have £1 in them -there interest rates are crap hence me taking Martin's advice and attempting to open an ICICI Hisave account. Before I found this out ie the check ICICI had done on me I applied for another savings account as I wanted a good rate of interest on my holiday money. Will they check for money laundering? Should I ring Creditexpert and have a note put on this entry stating it was for a savings account with a very low deposit.

Sorry for the long ramble but I'm worried!!

Alfie_E

magentadreamer wrote:

NOW when I had a nose arround my credit report from Credit expert I find ICICI have done a check on me with a note saying checked for money laundering purposes!!!

Can someone please tell me will this effect my credit score?

It won’t. It can’t possibly have any effect on your ability to get future credit, as only you can see that it’s on your file. Although it says the check was for money laundering purposes, you should really look at is as an identity check. Any bank will try to minimise the risk of customers laundering money by establishing their identities. The description just accurately reflects why ICICI asked Experian about you.

Quite why ICICI asked for more proof of identity, when they’ve clearly done a successful identity check using Experian, I’ve no idea. That identity check, along with the details of the current account you wish to link to the savings account, should have been enough. It was enough in my case. But, if you look at the threads discussing ICICI, you’ll see that there administration can sometimes be less that accurate.

YorkshireBoy

magentadreamer wrote:

Sorry for the long ramble but I'm worried!!

There's no need to be worried at all. This is standard procedure when opening a savings account, and is just an 'identity verification' check - that's all.

Identification verification checks, along with 'quotation searches', 'unrecorded enquiries', and your own file searches are not seen by other lenders searching your file.

You will do more damage than good by placing any kind of 'notice' on your credit file (if indeed they'd let you for the scenario you've described) because this would probably mean that you would always be declined for credit when 'automatically' searched/scored by the lenders.

There is an abundance of information on the Experian website, including their "Your credit report explained" booklet, which explains the above in far more detail, and you can download it free of charge.

magentadreamer

Thanks guy's! You've put my mind at rest.