Increased credit card use and credit rating

a4a

zerog wrote: »

There are very few valid reasons to complain to Equifax or Experian. Credit files belong to financial institutions and the CRAs only hold them. If any data is incorrect, you need to approach the financial institution responsible for that data. You can complain to the CRAs if the financial institution has asked for the data to be corrected, but the CRA is not correcting it.

In the USA, everybody has a credit score and each financial activity has a known impact on this score (may not be known to the public, apart from analysing one's own score before and after the activity). In the UK, the CRAs probably use a similar model to calculate scores, but these scores are NOT known to any financial institution, nor are they used in making lending decisions.

CRAs also submit a monthly feed of data to financial institutions.

Yes I know but my complaint lays predominantly in the very slow and antiquated system used by the CRA's and I was seeking information on here to add slightly to that complaint.

Fundamentally though, I think the CRA's have a lot to answer for and I believe that because there is no real competition and effectively a monopoly, then they are reluctant to invest in a more modern and sophisticated system.

To wait so long for information to be updated in this day and age is unacceptable, and even worse, is the fact that I recently queried something on my account and they told me I could wait 'for up to 30 days' to even get a response, which is disgraceful.

They will blame the delay on the lenders saying they have to wait for information from them, however they also say they work very closely with lenders and therefore, again in this day and age there is no reason why collectively they cant have or offer a far better and quicker system.

They also contradict themselves, as on the one hand they say they can only place on a file the information given to them by the lender but on the other hand, they then say that the delay in putting that information on your file is caused by them having to carry out checks! What checks do they need to carry out if they cannot interfere with that information?

I could go on and on and have a real rant about them but I will save that for them, but I believe until either the government or a governing body intervene or until a proactive competitor, like say Richard Branson comes along and threatens their monopolitive position, nothing will change.

a4a

fawnsinthegarden wrote: »

It's clear that you aren't going to accept any answers on here, but there is an article that explains about soft search, it also talks a bit more in depth about each lenders soft search service, how each service works and how reliable each is.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cardsloans/article-2087839/Soft-checks-loans-credit-cards-Avoid-damaging-credit-score.html

You may find this interesting:

Looking through CallCredits business pages, I notice that they offer businesses i.e. lenders a service whereby they can quickly and easily see a consumers credit score, as defined by callcredit, 'a snapshot of their file and credit worthiness'. Its called 'Gauge'.

This is actually a service offered to lenders by callcredit and fits in with what I've been told by someone who used to work at a lenders as a way that some lenders do a 'soft search', to see how CRA's view them.

Therefore, contrary to what some people think, these CRA credit scores do mean something to lenders and not meaningless as I suspected.

http://www.callcredit.co.uk/press-of...-bureau-scores

Taken from site:
"Gauge has been developed exclusively for Callcredit by DecisionMetrics and provides lenders with a fast, objective and consistent measurement of the credit risk associated with their customers"

The_Boss

Having googled it, that report is 6 years old and there's nothing saying they use the Noddle credit score.

a4a

The_Boss wrote: »

Having googled it, that report is 6 years old and there's nothing saying they use the Noddle credit score.

Which means they have been selling this service for quite sometime then.

fawnsinthegarden

As far as I am aware, the only people who are buying the credit score from the credit reference agencies that I have ever seen reported, are lettings agencies to gauge (no pun intended) whether the tenant is someone they want. I have never seen any reports of lenders using this service, and I cant see why they would use a meaningless score when they have access to your full file anyway.

a4a

You could well be right I don't know.

All I do know, is someone who used to work for a lender told me they use them for a soft search before carrying out a full application. Whether this is true or not I don't know.

The only thing I do know is that callcredit promote their scores as a service to their clients, so the two do link but quite possibly it could be just for firms like estate agents as you say.

a4a

I've just checked Experian and it seems unfortunately they do provide these scores to lenders:

"Experian monitors the customer file for significant events. If one is detected, the customer is re-scored using the Delphi for Customer Management scorecards. A file is then passed back from Experian containing the events and the new scores on either a weekly or monthly basis".

"The Delphi for New Business scoring models are designed to predict the likelihood that a new applicant for credit will become a good payer if accepted. They are used by over 150 leading UK financial institutions generating in excess of 70 million scores each year".

There is loads more information on their site about their scores (if you look under their business section) and from what i've read, it appears unfortunately that CRA's are even more powerful than I feared. This is scary reading.

a4a

The other way their scores are used, is lenders can ask CRA's (or look themselves) for a list of people with a score range of say 200-300 or 400-500 etc so that they can offer them certain products, which is why lenders who you have never used before suddenly write to you and tell you you have been pre-approved for £x's credit.

So credit scores are far from meaningless i'm afraid.

The_Boss

a4a wrote: »

The other way their scores are used, is lenders can ask CRA's (or look themselves) for a list of people with a score range of say 200-300 or 400-500 etc so that they can offer them certain products, which is why lenders who you have never used before suddenly write to you and tell you you have been pre-approved for £x's credit.

So credit scores are far from meaningless i'm afraid.

I'm afraid that is still meaningless - so what if they 'suddenly write to you'? When people with defaults have a 'score' of 999 it shows them up for what they are.

I am not going to copy and paste from the other thread but please can you not spam the board by copying and pasting exactly the same thing into different threads. What's the point in a discussion when we have to post the same thing into multiple threads?

JKSandy

I have d!jà vu.