Multiple current accounts

saintalan

saintalan wrote: »

Well, I have just had a bit of a rude awakening...

..

Well after the rude awakening...a pleasant surprise!

Having thought my score was going to be similar to OH, I decided to check mine, well - a whopping 968/999 !

Mine shows 2 (OH 3) neg score factors:

1. You have opened 4 (OH 4) new credit accounts in the last six month

2. You have made 9 (OH 8) credit applications in the last 6 months

The OH 3rd was " The average age of your credit accounts is 10 months" which for me was one of my 7 (OH 2) positive factors

• The average age of your credit accounts is 55 months.
• You've had your newest mortgage for 97 months. (This was BTL sold last month which started all this)
• You have 12 settled non-mail order credit accounts.
• Your highest credit limit on a single revolving credit account is £11k
• Your total non-mortgage credit balance is £0.00
• You are using 15 non-mortgage credit accounts
• The usage of your available credit indicates a lower risk.

Searches negatively affect score 9 (OH 8)

Searches with no impact 7 (OH 10)

All that leads me to believe that it is not the opening multiple accounts per se that is the issue more the fact that in the past I have had and maintained (dormant) quite a few accounts & credit which my OH has not and never had a mortgage.

This makes me think that once established the multiple accounts becomes a good thing, so perhaps better off not to close long standing accounts to maintain a higher average (>33 months).

Experian states "Having a large number of active credit accounts may decrease your credit score. However, if you have a large number of settled credit accounts, this can have a positive effect on your score."

I hope all this is of help or use to some, because my OH & I have been debt free for a while now I have tended to ignore credit check but maybe worthwhile for others opening multiple accounts to at least consider.

More comments welcome.

Cheers

Alan

PS Or as masonic says "it could be that Vodafone are just using unusual metrics. They could be treating a lot of credit account applications as a risk factor for identity theft and one thing the identity fraudsters really like to do is take out mobile phone contracts."

kl13

I have and have had a couple of current accounts for saving and requested no debit card. I have also switched two of these accounts (one with a debit card and one without) but on the switch form just said 'no debit card' when they asked about debit card details. Haven't had an problems. Just cut the cards up once the switch was complete, never used them anyway!