Entries on my Experien credit file -why????

leethesign

Isn't all this getting out of hand?

I'm trying to improve my credit score as I've been out of the country for 11 years. (Experien classed me as "Fair" with a score of 845)

Trying to be sensible and save money, I shopped around for motor insurance. Well, you do don't you?

I now find that there are loads of entries on my report from Insurance companies and brokers and my credit score has gone down to 773. Why the hell am I being penalised for trying to make my money go further. Does being frugal make me a bad person and a credit risk?

I may not be Brain of Britain, but I'm not a complete idiot. I just can't understand the "logic" behind this. . can anyone explain why this is so. (not the idiot bit, that's hereditary!)

Hobson_Crescent

Sorry about your predicament. The way credit scores work is risk assessment.

When you do searches, experian tells you the details of searches done on comparism sites do not get entered. I'm not sure if this also means it does not affect your credit score or just the entries are absent.

Anyway, if you shopped directly with insurers and brokers, then they will enter reports in other to assess your suitability for being insured. When you have multiple entries especially in short space of time, it gives a notion of someone desperate for credit (which is not necessarily so). So they rate you as high risk. With time it will rise again even without doing anything.

I hope you got your preferred insurance and not have to search again cos it will come with even higher rates. I learnt the hard way and now I never search until I'm ready and have to.

If over the phone, you can request that they do not search in a way as to create entries. Many times they can do that with other forms of 'soft' credit check systems.

shortcrust

Relax.:) The searches that insurance companies do are generally quotation searches rather than credit searches. They're not visible to lenders and they don't have a negative impact on your credit file. Think about it - just about everyone uses comparison sites and therefore have exactly the same searches on their file.

The credit scores the websites give you for a fee are pretty meaningless. Most people on here would urge you to ignore them. The go up and they go down and that keeps your interest up and the money rolling in. Lenders never see those scores. They make their decisions based on the info in your file according to their own criteria.

matttye

If you're referring to sites like comprethemarket, confused, gocompare, moneysupermarket, etc., then like short crust says they run quotation searches, not credit searches.

leethesign

Thanks all for your helpful input - it's appreciated

Hobson_Crescent

Thank you Shortcrust. Good insight although I hope it's based on solid fact. However I still think those quotation searches impacts on your credit score because I have experimented this bang on. But I agree it might not impact on your actual rating with lenders. If this is true, thank goodness.

matttye

Hobson_Crescent wrote: »

Thank you Shortcrust. Good insight although I hope it's based on solid fact. However I still think those quotation searches impacts on your credit score because I have experimented this bang on. But I agree it might not impact on your actual rating with lenders. If this is true, thank goodness.

The credit scores you have with CRA's are useless and not used by lenders. They might as well be affected by moon alignments, given how fickle they can be! Don't worry about those scores.

Quotation searches and anti money laundering searches etc. are definitely not seen by lenders. If you have a look at your Equifax report, you'll see there are two categories of searches on there. The ones on category 1 ARE seen by lenders, and the ones in category two AREN'T. That's the easiest way to see the difference