Reliability of Eligibility Checkers

jonnyjonjonjunior

Hi MSE Folks,

In the past few years, I've successfully reigned in an eye-watering level of personal debt (some of which led to adverse info on my credit files). All that remains is one disupted 5.5 year old default (£260) and a personal loan (completely up to date as is the rest of my file). I've also got a number of credit cards with zero balances - that I use and pay of each billing cycle. Currently also in the process of a mortgage application on track, with a high street lender.

I won't want to change any of my financial agreements until (fingers crossed) the mortgage completes. But once it does, I want to swap my loan for a cheaper loan and maybe consider swapping my credit cards for some rewards based/0% ones. To that end, I ran a couple of 'soft search' eligibility checkers - and they've both inferred I've got a 90-95% chance of getting competitive loans at Sainsbury's Bank and Santander and on the card side, for a number of Amex cards at similar percentages (90-95%) depending on the eligiblity checker used.

Prima facie, that's great news. But I understood that Amex are notoriously tough credit scorers (as a commerical entity of course that's there prerogative) and they don't have their own eligibility checker, as far as I know. So I just wondered if anyone had applied for similar products (e.g. amex/other prime cards/loans) and been accepted with a default that's 5.5 years old?

Good luck to all in your various financial endeavours,

Jonny

PaulW922

If your default is 5.5 years old why not wait another six months until it drops off? then you will not need to worry about it. :-)

jonnyjonjonjunior

Good question and by the time the mortgage completes it may even be that long.

I suppose I'm just curious about how reliable the calculators are?

.1xp

In my recent experience, I've not found them 'reliable'

Whilst they all say it's not guaranteed, I do think they should be updated to be more reliable to avoid wasted applications and further damage to a credit file.

For example, I did a check recently with Natwest, they said 'Great news, you are eligible etc.' - I then continued to the full application and was declined based on affordability.

I'd have thought that it would be able to identify that during the check and prevent a wasted application.

I have four cards with healthy limits etc - earn £50K and still after a full check their system felt I'd be a risk for some reason based on affordability.

In my opinion, I don't think that a search should be able to cause damage to a credit file when people are more savy and like to shop around for better deals etc. - more weight should be on how you run your finances and the history of them. Surely that's the most important thing and not the number of times companies have looked at your file.

Saying that, maybe it is .... it's all a big guessing game.

jonnyjonjonjunior

I agree .1xp - perhaps you don't have the old default as I do but I'm also over 50k on the salary front and have other cards (not sub prime but not prime time either.) all of which are well managed.

Having the facility to get an indication can be very useful. But maybe it should be more binary as in likely/unlikely with perhaps advice to contact the lender if it's not clear...?