CRAs know your exact monthly income and share it with lenders

[Deleted User]

Interesting piece on the Telegraph website this morning about how CallCredit, Equifax and Experian all hold detailed information about the income that goes into your bank account. Lenders see this when they access your credit file. This is news to me as I thought lenders just see your debt and repayment history, not your income.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/current-accounts/how-your-bank-spies-on-your-exact-monthly-income---and-shares-it/

molerat

That's why I get all the credit I ask for with the thousands that I pay into my current accounts each month, I wonder if they know it is the same £1K going round in circles though

PixelPound

Do they see more than we do, or is it bank dependent. I'm with Santander and my CRA reports have always shown a £0 for each month.

[Deleted User]

TSB (and I presume the Lloyds Banking Group) don't take faster payments into account as they are a good way of inflating CATO. Unfortunately! I'm still classed as new to bank at TSB as my salary doesn't go directly there.

As for the rest of it, it's got to be determined on who your bank(s) have signed up with to provide the data.

For those with adverse history, having them verify income (even if it is based just on BGC) would presumably be helpful - if they know that a salary of say £40k has been going through your account for the last 43 months as stated on the application form they know you didn't pluck that out of thin air, and may issue with small limits.

Interesting to see how they cope with card tagging with the likes of Curve (who I use for every transaction, except those where cards tagged as prepaid Mastercard/Mastercard debit aren't accepted) and revolut. All transactions on my credit card statement have a MCC code of 8999 - professional services. The same applied to PayPal I believe.

Good luck to the automated risk modelling finding out about my Whetherspoons addiction when it's all tagged as 8999 not bar/restaurant!! :P

GingerBob_3

An interesting report indeed, which goes to highlight the underhand way in which the financial services sector in general, and the CRA industry in particular, operates. It also highlights the total lack of meaningful data protection regulation applied to them.


The scoundrels have been data raping their customers with current account turnover (CATO) reporting for some time now. You don't consent to them doing this, other than in the vaguest terms whereby the companies involved help themselves to unlimited consent to do what they like, when they like, with information about you (see the First Direct example in the Telegraph report).


The only way you'll find out precisely what the CRAs have against you is to hit them with a SAR. As noted, CATO and much else is not published in credit reports.


Of course CATO is potentially wildly inaccurate, and we should all be worried that your average buffoon-ridden financial services provider is using it to snoop on your finances. Take my own case, for example; less than half of my income goes anywhere near my current account, and that may increase to about 80% in the future. So quite what the snoopers would make of it in my case I cannot imagine.


If ever there was a need for tough data protection regulation, CRAs and lenders stick out like a sore thumb, but with the circus clowns currently running the ICO there's not much chance that the bounders will be brought to book.