My Credit Tracker

Prosparta

Hi,

I recently applied to My Credit Tracker for an update with regard to my 'Credit Worthiness/Status'. The report showed that I was in the bottom 20% of the population for accepting credit. Over a year ago I used Experian for the same purpose and they placed me in the top 5%. Looking at the latest report I could see nothing on there that was particularly negative: no defaults on anything, registered voter, house owner, enough credit, but not too much, no CCjs or anything that was overtly negative or detrimental.

So, the report shows I'm in the lowest 20% of the population and there doesn't appear to be any explanation as to why My Credit Tracker has dropped my credit score so significantly. I bought a house last year, other than a 'new address', surely this must be seen as a positive attribute rather than something negative? No defaults on mortgage payments either.

As an aside, I did submit to a 'credit search' on this website for 'potential' credit last month, as it said the report would not show or have a negative impact on any future formal applications, but actually it did show on this latest report?

Any help/advice you have would be most beneficial.

Thank you

Tixy

I believe that my credit tracker only access your callcredit report, which is still the smallest of the 3 agencies.

If you want to check your credit files the best thing is to get copies of your credit files from the 3 credit reference agencies, not from third party agencies.

As an aside, I did submit to a 'credit search' on this website for 'potential' credit last month, as it said the report would not show or have a negative impact on any future formal applications, but actually it did show on this latest report?

It is only credit application searches that a potential lender will take in to consideration when assessing your file - this presumably showed as a quotation search or something similar?

Prosparta

Tixy.

Thank you very much for this response - most helpful! Can I ask a rather naive question, you state that they only have access to my 'callcredit report' - what is it and why can they only access a limited amount of information?

Thanks

Tixy

There are 3 credit reference agencies in the UK, experian ,equifax and callcredit.

Different lenders may use 1,2 or all 3 of these agencies. So the information each hold about you will be different (and callcredit is the least used of the 3). Potential lenders do not use places like mycredittracker or checkmyfile etc.

These 'other' credit agencies are reliant on having agreements in place with these 3, and all they can do is report what the main agencies are prepared to allow them to see. Therefore their interpretation of you as a credit customer and how you compare against the population as a whole is near worthless.

E.g. checkmyfile essentially only has access to equifax and callcredit data, mycredittracker only has access to the callcredit data.

Best bet if you want to know what a potential lender could see is to go direct to the 3 proper agencies and get your files from them.