Experian not showing paid off mortgage

offshoretiger

Hello everyone,
First time poster here with an unusual problem, but first some background if you will bear with me.
After living in Australia the last five years I have returned to the UK to resume work here 6 months ago. Before I left the UK I had a mortgage with The One Account, (RBS) and a RBS credit card, both in excellent health with absolutely zero negative history. While I was away, I sold my property in the UK, thus paying off the mortgage, in 2011. Due to my credit card being dormant, with a zero balance, RBS closed it, which is fair enough.
Now my problem is that both of these satisfactorily closed accounts do not appear on my credit report with Experian, and hence what IMHO should be an execelent report, is only producing a fair result of 850. Since returning to the UK I have not had the need to take out additional lines of credit, and basically the only activity has been my electoral enrolement. My power utility, Scottish Power, is not registering my account with them.
I have called The One Account people, but they say the account is now closed and there is nothing they can do? :mad:
I wish to re-establish my excellent credit history here, so that I can buy a car, and eventually get a mortgage again. I have good savings and a reasonable income, and on any metric, I am a good risk.
I just can't seem to prove it, as every financier in the UK relies on the credit agencies to rate you, and this one doesn't tell the whole story.
Any ideas what I can do?
Thanks for reading:)

BugsyBrowne

1. Your score is a worthless meaningless number sold by Experian only for profit so ignore this.

2. If you don't have any lines of credit how do you expect a lender to judge you on your current payment history.

3. In this day and age without having credit accounts will be seen as high risk.

offshoretiger

Not quite the helpful response I was after.
In a nutshell, has anyone any constructive advice on how to get ommitted, but good credit history restored to one's Experian credit report?

[Deleted User]

You'll need to establish new lines of credit. The old ones have dropped off your credit report and even if they were on there, they would be too old to be of any interest to new lenders.

Start with your own bank for a credit card. If they say no, then you will need to drop further down the scale to aqua /Vanquis.

fevlo

offshoretiger wrote: »

Not quite the helpful response I was after.
In a nutshell, has anyone any constructive advice on how to get ommitted, but good credit history restored to one's Experian credit report?

In fairness Bugseys post was actually correct !

Your credit score is totally meaningless, forget the number, its made up by the credit refrence agencies based on how THEY think you would act if given credit.
Each lender has its own set of criterior which we will never know
I think I may be right in saying that lenders dont even see the score that we can see. Ignor it and forget about it.

Bugsey is also right in saying that having no credit history is just as bad as having a negative one.
Opening a new credit card with a small limit, using and paying it off every month in full will help build a good credit profile.

A good credit report is obtained by making all your payments on time and not taking on too much credit as well as trying to keep the ratio between avaliable and used credit low.
Even having 3 or 4 credit cards all with zero ballances could be viewd as being negative.

derejam

I had the same problem as Offshoretiger. Simply wanted to rent a new Iphone , but Vodaphone said no due to absense of a credit rating from Experian.
So following reading all your replies , it seems I must access and use credit cards, because maybe I would not even be able to take a loan to pay back monthly, because I would not be able to get one in the first place.
I don't understand why one can't be invited to prove ones income and outgoings to show that one is a good credit risk, or even be allowed to prove how one has paid back mortgages etc in the past .

Thrugelmir

offshoretiger wrote: »

Not quite the helpful response I was after.
In a nutshell, has anyone any constructive advice on how to get ommitted, but good credit history restored to one's Experian credit report?

You will need to start from zero. 6 year old history has no bearing. The world has changed somewhat in the intervening period.

Electoral Roll Registration.
Mobile Phone Contract
Credit Card ( small balance cleared monthly).

These will be steps in the right direction.

Gordon_Hose

offshoretiger wrote: »

Not quite the helpful response I was after.
In a nutshell, has anyone any constructive advice on how to get ommitted, but good credit history restored to one's Experian credit report?

You mean it wasn't what you wanted to hear?

Experian isn't the only CRA either, there is Equifax and Callcredit (Noddle).

Experian_company_representative

There's some more advice on building a new credit history after returning to the UK from overseas in this Ask James Q&A. Hope it helps

James

PS. If the mortgage was repaid over six years ago it will have dropped off your credit history I'm afraid.

Tulyar

Similar problem with Experian - checked their data a few years ago and it showed a large mortgage twice. Now I have cleared and closed unsecured borrowing facilities and cleaned up to 1 credit card and 1 overdraft facility, the latter normally being £0 and the former kept to a minimum, but a useful reserve when something big hits before I get paid, and a way to get some consumer protection benefits.

One of the facilities was last recorded by Experian in November 2010 and another now closed is still showing as part of the total revolving credit, the whole inflates my revolving credit ceiling by around £35,000, and without the removal of the repaid loan amount, my unsecured credit total is inflated by around £20,000.

Another detail which knocked my score was when a lender seems to have made 3 credit searches and 3 general checks on the same date, but it may be that they have treated each element of a loan separately - however this then clocks a negative factor - 6 searches when I had only 4 in total on record previously.

This is making it rather heavy going in closing a deal for a mortgage, and left me doubting the value of credit scoring being delivered by these agencies.

offshoretiger

Hi James, thanks for the reply. I am the original poster.
To correct you, my mortgage was repaid in September 2011, so only 2.5 years ago. not 6 as you mentioned.
Further my UK RBS credit card was closed due to being dormant, in early 2011.
Yet neither of these appear on my report, and are well under the 6 year expiry times.
I find this strange, and it certainly causes me to question the accuracy of Experian, and I dare say, credit agencies in general.
Care to comment?