Experian (Credit - Very Poor)!

Jasonlucas93

Hello, I'm guessing some of you are experts in credit!! :j

Basically I've renewed my subscription to Experian just to check out my score and what not and my score is 538!!! which is very poor.:eek:

What i don't understand after going through it is I've never missed a payment in my life so something must be up.

But here's some information on my account

Number of credit accounts (including those settled) 18
Amount of available credit (excluding mortgages) £94
% of your total credit being used (excluding mortgages) 93%
Amount of outstanding debt (excluding mortgages) £4099
Number of accounts overdue 0
Number of missed or late payments in the last year 0

I've guessing something that's affecting it is because of the % of credit I've used and maybe the amount of accounts even though most of them are 'Settled' and could another thing be because I'm a bit of a tool and recently I've been doing searches for loans maybe -.-

Bit of help please guy, need some top tips in improving my score!!! Thanks for any help peeps!!

sirwiggum

As is gospel on this forum, these scores are arbitrary and meaningless.

At best they give an indication to the end user as to likelihood of credit acceptance.
(At one point I had 3 defaults on file and Experian gave me a score in the 900s....)

Creditors do not use these scores, they set their own criteria.

Your settled accounts - do these have defaults, arrangement to pay etc.?

Otherwise, some creditors may object to your high level of current debt.

Jasonlucas93

no none of the settled ones have defaults or anything!! well basically because i will be getting a bank loan in the next few months they've said because of my credit score they can only offer me 29.9% APR which there is no way i want to paying so much interest! my bank is Lloyds by the way!

fevlo

Jasonlucas93 wrote: »

no none of the settled ones have defaults or anything!! well basically because i will be getting a bank loan in the next few months they've said because of my credit score they can only offer me 29.9% APR which there is no way i want to paying so much interest! my bank is Lloyds by the way!

By refering to "Score" they probally mean a score generated by their internal scoring system.
Im sure lenders dont even see the score generated by CRA's
It could be the 93% credit being used that is dragging you down a bit.
Perhaps, if possiable try reducing the ballance on this debt to lower the percentage used.

As said befor, pay no attention to the score sold by the CRA's, the most important factor is simply to maintain a good history of payments ect

longtermplanner

Lots of searches won't have helped

How could you manage without this loan? Could you pay down some more of the current debt?

CherlokHomes

Jasonlucas93 wrote: »

no none of the settled ones have defaults or anything!! well basically because i will be getting a bank loan in the next few months they've said because of my credit score they can only offer me 29.9% APR which there is no way i want to paying so much interest! my bank is Lloyds by the way!

The bank didn't say that.

Jasonlucas93

fevlo wrote: »

By refering to "Score" they probally mean a score generated by their internal scoring system.
Im sure lenders dont even see the score generated by CRA's
It could be the 93% credit being used that is dragging you down a bit.
Perhaps, if possiable try reducing the ballance on this debt to lower the percentage used.

As said befor, pay no attention to the score sold by the CRA's, the most important factor is simply to maintain a good history of payments ect

Well according to their internal scoring system i appear to do be doing well I'm in a risk band 3 out of 9 with them which they've said is completely fine.


well it would help to get a bank loan but i guess not at the moment because currently i have an 'Amigo loan' which is at 49.9% apr which is horrendous!! so i did want the bank loan to clear that, clear my catalogues and buy a car that will last me the duration of the loan (hopefully)

on the Lloyds website it shows the APR is 12.8% although if you take out £7500 + it would be reduced to 6.4% APR which would mean if i was taking out £10,000 for 5 years it would be payments of £198 a month but when i went into see the bank manager she's told me that they would offer 29.9% apr which is £303 a month for 5 years paying £18000 in total which yes i can afford but I'm not willing on paying the £8000 interest -.-

fevlo

Jasonlucas93 wrote: »

Well according to their internal scoring system i appear to do be doing well I'm in a risk band 3 out of 9 with them which they've said is completely fine.


well it would help to get a bank loan but i guess not at the moment because currently i have an 'Amigo loan' which is at 49.9% apr which is horrendous!! so i did want the bank loan to clear that, clear my catalogues and buy a car that will last me the duration of the loan (hopefully)

on the Lloyds website it shows the APR is 12.8% although if you take out £7500 + it would be reduced to 6.4% APR which would mean if i was taking out £10,000 for 5 years it would be payments of £198 a month but when i went into see the bank manager she's told me that they would offer 29.9% apr which is £303 a month for 5 years paying £18000 in total which yes i can afford but I'm not willing on paying the £8000 interest -.-

Your internal score is how you have handled other accounts with Lloyds, they will then refer to your credit file when you apply for new borrowing and will then generate another score based on their acceptance profile. The internal score is only 1 factore taken into account within their acceptance profile.
I would say having the presence of an Amigo Loan wont help as its likely to be viewed as a sub prime loan.

Its most likely the Amigo loan and the high percentage of used credit that is causing the higher APR from the bank.

There is not much you can do about the Amigo loan as it will be there for 6 years from the date the account is settled but if you can, try and reduce the ballance of any other credit accounts to bring down the percentage of used credit.

CherlokHomes

fevlo wrote: »

Your internal score is how you have handled other accounts with Lloyds, they will then refer to your credit file when you apply for new borrowing and will then generate another score based on their acceptance profile. The internal score is only 1 factore taken into account within their acceptance profile.
I would say having the presence of an Amigo Loan wont help as its likely to be viewed as a sub prime loan.

Its most likely the Amigo loan and the high percentage of used credit that is causing the higher APR from the bank.

There is not much you can do about the Amigo loan as it will be there for 6 years from the date the account is settled but if you can, try and reduce the ballance of any other credit accounts to bring down the percentage of used credit.

I'm afraid you've just made the above up as lloyds do not refer to your credit file when you apply to new borrowing.

The system will already have what borrowing facilities are available to a customer which is updated around the 20th of each month.

Experian_company_representative

High utilisation is like yo be an issue, along with the number of recent credit checks. Reducing your debt and holding off any new applications for a while should improve your credit history.

James

fevlo

Innovate wrote: »

I'm afraid you've just made the above up as lloyds do not refer to your credit file when you apply to new borrowing.

The system will already have what borrowing facilities are available to a customer which is updated around the 20th of each month.

OK, Fair enough if that is the case, But where do they get their information from as to what borrowing is avalibale if not the individuals credit file ?
Surely they cant base the decision soley on internal information ?