Nationwide Credit Check Agency

FoxyDen

Good morning all,
I have recently (22/7/2020) applied for a mortgage with Nationwide, and yesterday i finally saw some movement on the application with a credit search notification. Everything i have read and seen online to date has indicated that Nationwide only use Experian for credit searches, so (probably foolishly) i have been focused on my Experian credit report which is '999'. But, today i received notification that a credit search has taken place on my free Credit Karma account (set up yonks ago, and not really paid much attention) and after looking it was indeed a hard check by Nationwide. My score on that one is 'good' whereas Experian is 'Excellent' (not used the credit card in a while...), but also my middle name on Karma is wrong (changed it years ago), so unsure if that will cause any issues?

Anyway, i just wanted to create an electronic record in case anyone else in the future is searching for what credit agency Nationwide use, and to say it is no longer Experian but TransUnion   

thaddy

Hi I think they use Equifax as well which you can access for free using Clearscore. Some people have reported soft searches being done on there but we had both soft and hard searches done on Transunion. Your middle name shouldn't matter too much if you have it recorded correctly on your current credit information and electoral roll.

kingstreet

It's now Equifax and TransUnion but they can still drop to Experian if needed. It changed a couple of years ago when they went to a soft search DIP. It followed years of issues with Experian over address targeting, particularly with flats.

FoxyDen

Thank you both for this, i have just signed up for to Equifax and a hard search was also completed today by Nationwide on there, so it does seem they're using both Equifax and TransUnion! Thankfully, the middle name is correct on the Equifax report, so that should also squash any potentially issues on the TransUnion one - odd that happened! 
No idea why all my searches online repeatedly pointed me to Experian as the one used by Nationwide (and most lenders)! 

gunner786

I had a soft search on 16th july when i did full application but nothing after that. No news nothing

Thrugelmir

Ignore the consumer ratings that you see. Lenders access the data sets available and using algorithms benchmark against their own internal criteria.