FAO: James Jones, Experian Rep, Attempt 2

izools

Just wondering if we could keep the chat away from this thread until James responds, I think he's been made to feel quite unwelcome on the other thread.

James, as you didn't answer my question in my original thread, perhaps you could enlighten the boys and girls in this one:

Why isn't the presence of a bankruptcy order flagged as a negative factor on your current scoring model?

We all know there is nothing more negative than a discharged bankrupty under six years old, other than an undischarged one of course.

izools

James,

Do you not fancy fielding this query?

Experian_company_representative

It's not flagged as an issue affecting your Experian Credit Score because it's not affecting your Experian Credit Score. As I think I explained before, settled public record entries over a certain age are not factored into our scoring for the CreditExpert product as this has been built to reflect the scoring we support at most major lenders. However, alongside any lender's scorecard they will also use policy rules. A lender could use these to fast-track a decision based on particular circumstances if they wished, irrespective of the score. Being below the age of eighteen or having been bankrupt recently could well be a policy rule some lenders set as a automatic decline or perhaps a referral for further investigation. We are not making a decision with the CreditExpert score so we do not employ policy rules. However, I think it would be useful to flag up to people using our service that factors other than those used in the score could affect a lending decision - and actually we do already that to a certain extent - but if we can make this clearer on the site then we will do that, so thanks for raising this.

James Jones

izools

Thank you James.

I look forward to seeing this flagged in my Negative Factors soon.

It is great to see you are taking on board comments to correct potential mistakes you may have made with the new scoring model.

As an aside, it'd be great to know which lenders don't take old BR orders into account in their scoring model as I wouldn't mind a better interest rate on my loan :beer:

Tixy

James - do you not think, just perhaps, that if the experian credit score did reflect public record entries in the whole of the last 6 years - that might make your product more useful or relevant to your customers (by customers I mean the people you sell the score to, not your corporate customers).

cse

Look at it this way - a company will most likely have a blanket policy around whether they accept discharged bankrupts or not.

If they do accept discharged bankrupts, they will want the Experian score to be an accurate representation of which of those discharged bankrupts are the most credit worthy. If the Experian credit score uses the discharged bankruptcy as an input, the scorecard will not be able to differentiate between different discharged bankrupts sufficiently to be of any use to the credit provider

If a lender refuses to deal with discharged bankrupts they will usually tell you that before you apply, in which case you will not get credit with them no matter how good your Experian score is. If they do accept discharged bankrupts however - an sadly it's usually only the sub-prime lenders who do - then the Experian score is useful to both yourself and the lender

[note: the above is all speculation, not official in any way, but kind of makes sense coming from my stats background]

Tixy

Experian_company_representative wrote: »

However, I think it would be useful to flag up to people using our service that factors other than those used in the score could affect a lending decision - and actually we do already that to a certain extent - but if we can make this clearer on the site then we will do that, so thanks for raising this.

I think you could make it clearer on the site.

So are you proposing that in future your site might say something like

Your CreditExpert score is 827.
Despite your CreditExpert score being 827 there are many other factors that will influence whether a lender will decide to lend to you, e.g if you have been bankrupt or are under 18 this is not taken into account when calculating your score.
A lender will also take into account your financial circumstances, including variables such as how much you earn when making a decision.
Your CreditExpert score of 827 is not reflective of your chance of obtaining credit.

I think that would be clearer. If any changes you implement are not as clear as that, then they could be improved even further.

Actually - maybe you could just state
Your CreditExpert score of 827 is not reflective of your chance of obtaining credit
which is, after all, true as well as succinct.

JohalaReewi

I notice James is still calling it the Experian credit score even though Experian don't offer any credit (so it isn't a credit score).