Understanding linked addresses

bsouth1

I am trying to understand how linked addresses work. There are a number of scenarios that may be possible so I ask the experts on here to pick their brain:

1. If you have an actively shared credit account and give a new address then the lender will notify the CRA of the new address. Is it the lender or the CRA who creates the linked address?

2. If a credit check (whether approved or not) is made at your new address checking the new address for the first time as well as your previous address, will the CRA create a linked address?

3. If you have been at a new address over 3 years and your credit file is checked for the first time for a new application and your previous address is not known to the lender, what happens? The initial check may fail because no data, but what next?
(a) Your credit file name, dob and old address are stored for at least 6 years, so does the lender run a trace using name and dob to find your older credit info?
(b)When the CRA gets a search with a name and dob and a new address they don't already know about, do they try to match the name and dob to find the old address and does it create a linked address?

Some of the above could happen if someone has several living places or they may have no active credit, or used to have credit but don't anymore and will not apply to everyone, but it is to understand how the linking process works and not advice about a specific scenario which some might want to help with.

thansk

bsouth1

I have found some answers to 1 and 2.

1. It is the CRA who creates a new linked address whenever they receive information from a lender containing more than 1 address.

2. When a lender reports more than 1 address via a credit check, if one of the addresses is a new address and the other is a known address, the CRA will create a link, even if no accounts exist at the new address.

3. Still no clue but I can see how it might result in messy problems.
CRA's do have the ability to search for addresses based on name and dob only for tracing, but would they automatically create a link? I have heard that lenders can see suspected links when carrying out a credit check that we cannot see on our reports. Is this true?

Any ideas from someone in the know/experian rep would be helpful.

tenchy

Reading numerous posts on this forum, it's clear that address linking policies of the CRAs leave a lot to be desired. For instance, did you know that once a link is established it is never removed? You can be linked to an address simply by having mail redirected to it, or even a parcel delivered to it. The CRAs seem to have multiple sources of 'intelligence' that facilitate address linking, but the biggest problem seems to be that mistakes are frequent.


I doubt you'll get any feedback from the Experian rep on this, or any other matter, now. It seems the reps have been chased away by the credit score deniers and the general aggression they've faced in recent times; which is a pity.