Help with default and mortgage application

ddraiggoch2021

Hi folks,

Hope you're all well.

I wonder if you could help me - I am in the process of buying a house (about to get AIP), and decided to make the most of the bank holiday and tidied out my old paperwork.

To my horror, I found a default notice from a pet insurance company in February 2016.  In all honesty, I can't quite recall what happened (i.e. I cancelled my direct debit, my direct debit changed, etc.  I had pet insurance for the same time period with another company at the same time, and I wonder if my much younger and unwise self cancelled the direct debit for the surplus insurance and didn't think any more of it).  

I have correspondence from the company from May 2016 asking to renew my policy, and then another letter asking me to pay the full insurance amount.  Given that I'd applied for another company in the meantime, I suspect it was simply that I didn't renew.  I have not received any further correspondence since and I genuinely do not remember if I took further action (i.e. paid the balance).

I used the MSE Credit Club Credit report service, and as far as I can see there are no default payments logged on my credit report (I have been using it since January this year, which would be within the six years since the default).  

I am now extremely worried that this will scupper my future mortgage application, but at the same time it's not on my credit report, and I've not been chased for it.

My worst fear is that it's not showing up on the Credit Club credit report (which pulls through Experian), and I have declared to my mortgage broker that I have not received any defaults - up until this morning, I believed it!

Any advice would be most welcome - thank you.

SusieT

If the default is over 6 years old it will have dropped off your credit report, so should not show up on the other agencies either.

ddraiggoch2021

SusieT said:

If the default is over 6 years old it will have dropped off your credit report, so should not show up on the other agencies either.

Thank you.  The frustrating thing is I genuinely don't know how this was resolved and if I have debts outstanding - and at this stage of a mortgage application, I'm not sure I'm inclined to dig around six years later.

The fact that there doesn't appear to be anything on my report, and there's been no follow up, suggests I may be in the clear.  Still very worried though.

SusieT

If you did not pay it the debt will still be outstanding with whoever owns it now, but, if that is the case it will be statute barred now so IF they were to write to you you could either pay it, or, write back saying statute barred and that they should not persue you again for it. As a guess at it being a small amount, they may well have taken a commercial decision and written it off, in which case you will not hear any more from anyone.

ddraiggoch2021

SusieT said:

If you did not pay it the debt will still be outstanding with whoever owns it now, but, if that is the case it will be statute barred now so IF they were to write to you you could either pay it, or, write back saying statute barred and that they should not persue you again for it. As a guess at it being a small amount, they may well have taken a commercial decision and written it off, in which case you will not hear any more from anyone.

Thanks so much for coming back to me. The fact that it doesn’t seem to appear on my credit report baffles me a bit - even when I checked in January, which would have (just) been within six years. Given the minimal chasing I do wonder if it has been written off. 

ddraiggoch2021

Also incidentally, it’s not the debt I’m worry about - more that I’ve declared no defaults to my mortgage adviser, and any subsequent impact to my mortgage application.