MSE News: New totally free way to get your Experian Credit Report 23 February 2017 at 6:14PM edited 23 February 2017 at 6:17PM in Credit file & ratings 57 replies 15.7K views

MSE_Luke

It's your financial CV. You need to see what it says about you. If wrong it can kill cheap mortgages, mobiles & more...

Read the full story:
'New totally free way to get your Experian Credit Report'

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Paul_Herring

1. Experian Credit Score - are you a good risk? A score, from 0-999, based on your report, indicating if a typical lender will see you as a good or bad risk. Yet it's art not science, it doesn't include income & each lender is different.

As pointed out numerous times on here for years, this number means absolutely nothing.

It omits things that credit suppliers take into account, skews things they do, and technically would only apply if Experian themselves were offering credit. People without jobs getting 999s, people with high salaries getting 500s.

But you can bet if Experian were offering credit, this scare wouldn't be the one they'd use to make a decision.

antrobus

Paul_Herring wrote: »

...But you can bet if Experian were offering credit, this score wouldn't be the one they'd use to make a decision.

Experian aren't just a CRA. They do 'credit scoring' for banks as well. Mind you, I'd bet it was a different number to the one produced by the CRA.:)

http://www.experian.co.uk/financial-services/

onthego

Is anyone else experiencing the same problems I am with the MSE credit club view of the Experian credit report, in that it shows duplicates or triplicates of all my current accounts and credit accounts, and then reports total credit usage as three times what it actually is, because it's counted each account three times?
This seems to be just a problem with this website, as I got my Experian credit report direct from Experian the month before and it didn't have all these duplicates/triplicates on.

MSE_Dan_L

onthego wrote: »

Is anyone else experiencing the same problems I am with the MSE credit club view of the Experian credit report, in that it shows duplicates or triplicates of all my current accounts and credit accounts, and then reports total credit usage as three times what it actually is, because it's counted each account three times?

Hi onthego

We've had a few users raise this with us. It seems to be a problem where the info your provide to MSE is then matched up with Experian on your credit report.

Short-term the best way to raise this is via the 'need some help' button within your credit report, which'll flag this over to Experian.

MSE's and Experian's techies are aware of this and are looking into how it can be prevented from showing.

RedDwarf82

MSE_Dan_L wrote: »

Hi onthego

We've had a few users raise this with us. It seems to be a problem where the info your provide to MSE is then matched up with Experian on your credit report.

Short-term the best way to raise this is via the 'need some help' button within your credit report, which'll flag this over to Experian.

MSE's and Experian's techies are aware of this and are looking into how it can be prevented from showing.

What's known about it right now? Is it fair to suppose that if MSE sees onthego is using three times the credit he is actually using... then (at least some) lenders will see the same?
Could onthego have been denied credit in the past because of this?

nomoneytoday

For some reason it has my score in the green, but spending pattern in the red.


Since my outgoings are less than 60% of my take home that seems at odds to me?


It would be interesting to see the maths behind the red score..

MSE_Dan_L

nomoneytoday wrote: »

It would be interesting to see the maths behind the red score..

Hi Nomoneytoday

Thanks for your comments. This might be something which is added in the future, but for the moment the best explanation is provided on the affordability tab.

There's quite a few different elements considered here, including the figures you tell us, info from your credit report, plus a few bits of data from the office of national statistics. Given the number of information points used in credit club, there's a balance on how much information we display vs this being even more confusing.

MSE_Dan_L

Malcnascar wrote: »

There were 10 soft searches with todays date, all for MSE credit club. Cant see why there was a need for this many searches.

Hi Malcnascar

At the moment, we don't do a complete soft search when you first log into your account as this would likely increase the time it takes to load up. So you'll see soft searches from verification, your score calculation, your report creation and then additional searches if you run eligibility checks. However these won't be added at every login - your score and report only update a maximum of every 30 days.

The main thing to remember is that these are all soft, so they don't affect your score or your ability to get credit.

For more on this topic, do take a look here.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/comparison-site-credit-score

Paul_Herring

antrobus wrote: »

Experian aren't just a CRA. They do 'credit scoring' for banks as well. Mind you, I'd bet it was a different number to the one produced by the CRA.:)

http://www.experian.co.uk/financial-services/

They have been for ages. Elsethread, 6 years ago: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3158508#10

Paul_Herring wrote:

Experian_company_representative wrote:

We may not lend money but we build credit scoring systems for many major UK lenders,

No, you provide a centralised data store whereby legitimate lenders may form an opinion on a potential borrower based on, among other things, that data you provide - which originated at other lenders.

(Absent any systems you may sell to lenders, but then again those systems will (should!) include stuff you don't put into the scores you sell.)

[...]

For a lender, your "score" may be a shortcut for them to whittle out the chaf from the wheat, so to speak, but if the numbers you give to lenders are anything like those you dish out to potential borrowers, I think those companies solely using that short-cut are either missing a lot of wheat, or getting lot of chaff.

(The whole [STRIKE]post[/STRIKE] thread may be worth a read.)

MABLE

Malcnascar wrote: »

Tried it t0day. Happy with some aspects, confused with others.

There were 10 soft searches with todays date, all for MSE credit club. Cant see why there was a need for this many searches. Needless to say I have decided to revert to "old fashioned" pay £2 direct to credit agency once a year for my credit file.

I have decided to discontinue this service but thanks for trying.

Rest of service told me what I expected and knew it's saved me £2 for this year for which I am grateful.

I certainly would not bother paying £2 when I can see the same information for free. Also the so called soft searches are apparently never seen by a potential lender.