Rent Tracking - Canopy/Experian
brookesac
Forumite 1 Post
Just wanted to give some feedback of my experience of rent tracking with Canopy. I saw in my weekly email from MSE that rent tracking was available with Experian/Canopy and as I always pay mine on time I decided it would be a good idea to sign up for this. Sadly, despite giving permissions for open banking with my bank, the company were recording my rent as late and each time I had to contact them to resolve this. I had asked why this issue was recurring and their response was:- "Our tech team
are working hard to make the rent tracking journey as smooth as possible,
unfortunately I cannot promise there is a quick fix and it could potentially
take some time". I have now cancelled the open banking and deleted my Canopy account as I signed up knowing that I am a good rent payer and for this to happen more than once does not instil me with confidence in their rent tracking process. I hope to one day be able to sign up for something similar with a company that can manage this process.
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what I find absurd is that someone can successfully pay rent of £1000 a month for years, yet be told they cannot afford a £600 mortgage by banks.
If the banks wanted to use the payment of rent over a period of time then they would just request copies of bank statements showing this. The fact that they don't take it into account currently when they could shows that they don't think it factors that highly in their affordability assessments.
A Mortgage where your committing to repay it over a period of 25 years with the chance of interest rate increases over that time is a very different thing to a rental contract where usually the commitment is usually 12 months or less, plus there are different costs and difficulties with a rental eviction vs debt collection procedures and a potential forced sale of a house by a bank to recoup some of their money.
Also the general public have brought about tighter mortgage affordability by making "miss-sale" complaints every chance they get on a range of financial products. This has lead to the banks having to justify lending the money and having to actively check they can afford it over the 25 year period because people are generally saying they can't be trusted to make those decisions themselves so the banks have to err on the side of caution.
What I meant by my post is that I do think its a good idea for rent to be on credit files. I find it ridiculous that you have to get into debt and then get back out (by say showing how sensible you can be with a credit card) as 'no credit history' can be as bad as no credit history. Having a solid rent contract to bolster it can, in my opinion, only be a good thing. I dont think its absurd that someone who has fulfilled their rental contract by paying on time and in full each month can have that reflected in their 'financial history' that people use to make lending decisions.
Why should someone who gets a fancy car on finance whilst living with mum and dad get a ‘good credit history’ because they pay it all on time, but someone who moves out and rents has no credit history despite paying a large amount in rent every month, on time, as agreed.
you may disagree because it’s not ‘credit’ however clearly some people have seen a benefit to recording someone sticking to an agreement and paying a large amount of their income each month in return for a service (not a car, or a loan, or a mobile phone contract, or a credit card)
What I find absurd is people with no history being treated as if they cannot handle money. When I bought my house I had ‘good history’ as my car was financed and I’d paid off a loan and a credit card. My partner had ‘bad’ history (no history) as he had saved for his car and bought outright, and always budgeted so he never had to take loans and credit cards. I was clearly less financially stable and astute than him, yet on paper I was the better bet?