At what point should a file be marked as defaulted?

heyJui

Hi All

This might be a stupid question so apologies in advance, but I wondered when an account status should be changed to 'default' on your credit file?

For example, if you missed the 1st payment in April and continued to miss payments, would the account be marked as defaulted from the 4th missed payment onwards (July in this case), with April/May/June showing the usual 1,2,3 missed payment markers, or should the account show as being defaulted from April when the first missed payment occurred?

Is it always on the 4th missed payment that a default is applied?

Thanks

Anthorn

Quite an open answer: A default is when you fail to keep up with your obligations under the contract and the recognition of that varies from lender to lender and contract to contract. It's easier to determine when for example a late payment appears in the history of an account, or an over-limit or a non-payment and we can probably answer quite accurately "from the second consecutive month".

Looking back to 2007/8 when I became a financial non-entity, untouchable and overal b'tard my accounts at the default date were preceded by several months of non-payment but none could be compared to another in terms of duration of the non-payments.

stockport_hatter

From my experience i have found that different lenders have different criteria when recording a default on a credit file. For instance i entered into a debt management plan in January 2010 and a defeault wasn't recorded on my credit file until 13 and 15 months of the account falling into arrears with two lenders.

Once i had completed the debt management plan and all debts had been settled i contacted both lenders to query if the date of the default could be amended as in my eyes i had defaulted on my loan in February 2010 when i couldn't keep up my agreed loan repayments. Unfortunately because i was making payments of approximately 60% of the original loan agreement whilst in the debt management plan my account didn't fall into their specified level of arrears until a long period after i had started the DMP.

If i'd have known this back in 2010 then i would have made minimal payments at the start of the debt management plan so that my account defaulted earlier and would have disappeared off my credit file earlier.