Insurance comparison sites- search impact

aetbaar

Hi

i have made some home insurance enquiries via comparison sites and note these searches get marked on your credit report- do these have any negative impacts at all on credit rating as i just did a search to compare quotes and nothing else and now these searches show on my credit report - is that an issue?

Hazzinho

No it'll have no effect so don't worry about it, they are soft searches and aren't credit applications.

The_Boss

Listen to Hazzinho. For he/she speaketh the truth.

If applying for credit, lenders cannot even see them.

aetbaar

great thanks for that it has put my mind at ease

madgeB

We noticed the credit rating did change after searching for comparison car insurance quotes, admittedly not dramatically, but there are no warnings about this occurring which maybe there should be.

GingerBob_3

This can be a bit time consuming but - when getting insurance quotes online for virtually any product, first get the quotes using completely fictitious, but realistic, personal data. You can usually get a long way through the process, nearly always to the point of receiving the quote. I always do this.

The_Boss

madgeB wrote: »

We noticed the credit rating did change after searching for comparison car insurance quotes, admittedly not dramatically, but there are no warnings about this occurring which maybe there should be.

You don't have a credit rating. If you are talking about an Experian, Equifax or Noddle score then these are fictitious values as you do not have a credit score.

InsideInsurance

The_Boss wrote: »

You don't have a credit rating. If you are talking about an Experian, Equifax or Noddle score then these are fictitious values as you do not have a credit score.

There is no universal credit score like there is in the US but credit scores as sold by Experian, Equifax and CallCredit (not sure why you used the consumer website name for them) are used by some smaller companies (eg insurance companies).

More serious lenders often do give you a credit score but it is a score from their own internal weighting system and not the number sold by the CRAs. Additionally the rating is not just made up from your history as supplied by the CRAs but from additional criteria in your other answers (eg income)

The_Boss

InsideInsurance wrote: »

There is no universal credit score like there is in the US but credit scores as sold by Experian, Equifax and CallCredit (not sure why you used the consumer website name for them) are used by some smaller companies (eg insurance companies).

More serious lenders often do give you a credit score but it is a score from their own internal weighting system and not the number sold by the CRAs. Additionally the rating is not just made up from your history as supplied by the CRAs but from additional criteria in your other answers (eg income)

People do not have a score, but applications do. I've said what you've said in your second paragraph hundreds of times on here.

InsideInsurance

The_Boss wrote: »

People do not have a score, but applications do. I've said what you've said in your second paragraph hundreds of times on here.

They do not have a universal score. Some basic lenders and others do use the CRAs own score - at least two major insurance groups use the score as a rating factor in their Motor and Home insurance as effectively a gauge of the fraud risk

The_Boss

InsideInsurance wrote: »

They do not have a universal score. Some basic lenders and others do use the CRAs own score - at least two major insurance groups use the score as a rating factor in their Motor and Home insurance as effectively a gauge of the fraud risk

So your example is that of two small fee low risk accounts? If you dont pay, the insurer withdraws the service they are supplying. It's not a fair comparison to 'proper' credit agreements such as loans, credit cards, mortgages etc. The fact that they may use these irrelevant scores concerns me if they are not using them in conjunction with application data so if you could name names that would be useful in knowing who to avoid in future.