Should I keep an account open from 2003, just to help maintain good credit rating?

mutterances

Bizarre situation - I opened an account in 2003 with Intelligent Finance (IF.com). I credited it with £1 at the time, but they never completed setting it up. I lost access to my £1 and frankly ultimately forgot I'd requested this after a few years of trying to get it resolved.

Suddenly out of the blue (18 years later, no less!) IF write to me at my new address, saying due to a !!!!!!-up their side they never finished setting up the account, but they can now. I have confirmed my new address details, and supposedly the account is now live (with a 50% gain in interest, a whole extra 50p waiting for me!!) I have a potential use for the account but still cannot access it as they never posted me the PIN, and trying to get through to IF on the phone (you can only contact them online once you're in your account) has proven problematic.

I'm now thinking of ticking the box to close my account and get my £1.50 back, reading online they are clearly a terrible bank. However, because the account was technically setup in 2003, it is now the oldest bank listed on my credit file. Is there merit in me keeping this account open purely to say I still have an active bank AC from 18 years ago? I'm likely to be seeking a new mortgage later in 2022, so anything that will help keep my credit rating up is worth maintaining I guess. At the same time, I'd rather not have a useless account floating around that I'm never going to use. My next most recent bank account is 2008, so perhaps having an account 5 years older isn't going to make a difference to my score?

Many thanks for anyone's thoughts :-)

[Deleted User]

It may make a difference to your score, but not to your credit worthiness.

Do what is right for you. If you close it, don't worry about the drop in score. No one will ever see it.

mutterances

Cheers, zx81.

That's exactly the kind of response I wanted - I'm just going to close it in that case :-)

Thanks for replying so quick!