Credit searches by Aviva Central Services

JimmyTheWig · 4 May 2012 at 5:24PM

Aviva_company_representative wrote: »

I strongly encourage you to email our credit search team at [EMAIL="UKDISUPPORT@aviva.co.uk"]UKDISUPPORT@aviva.co.uk[/EMAIL] with any and all your queries and they will investigate on your behalf and contact you regarding any searches carried out by ourselves.

Those of us who have done this have just received the stock answer confirming that the searches were done through comparrison sites.

We understand that this may not answer all of your questions, however hope that you can appreciate it is very difficult to answer all queries you may have on a public forum, especially with the strict FSA guidelines we must adhere to regarding the disclosure of personal information.

Dave, I presume that you can answer the following without disclosing any personal information:
_Why_ do Aviva do a credit search when simply asking for a quote for insurance?
Why is it only Aviva who do this and not all the other scores of companies who quote via these sites?

flipdee · 4 May 2012 at 6:23PM

ARGH!!!!!!!!!
No wonder my "credit score" has just gone down the toilet,
3 FLIPPING Credit Searches by Aviva Central Services!
What the chuff are they playing at?
Do we know what comparison websites do this?
As clearly 3 different sites I have used previously have all decided as my insurance is up for renewal that they'll tarnish my credit report by hammering it as hard as they can.
I WILL DEFINITELY NOT BE GOING WITH AVIVA!
ARGH!!!!!!!!

MsCabbage · 5 May 2012 at 9:52AM

Hey Everyone!

I have to say it seems we are overlooking something obvious here and that is Martin Lewis is usually the person shouting from the roof tops about scandals like this. Our credits scores and being wrongly degraded by Aviva and it is gaining valuable full credit file data on us wrongly when all we have done is ask for an insurance quote...

Because of that I sent an email to his team to look into this (as they recommended we use these comparison sites) and I have to say I am very dissapointed it has been completed ignored...

Here is a copy of my email with my personal details removed.

I have been using your guidesfor price comparisons for my car and home insurance for ages now.

However, I recently checkedmy credit file to find a load of credit searches (not invisible insurancequotes) on my credit file by Aviva Central Services. Anyway, to cut along story short I found out this has occurred from using the price comparisonsites Go Compare and Moneysupermarket – see below an email from Avivaconfirming this.

I find your site and MartinLewis a fantastic source of information and I feel sure you will agree that youshould make people aware of this is in the CONS section of each pricecomparison site that you recommend.

There is a simple workaroundyou could suggest and that is to use a fictional name on an address a few doorsaway with the same postcode.

PS. You do realise thatanyone who has used these sites will have the extra credit searches and theneach year after they will get another one! This means there will havebeen literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of unnecessary creditsearches that will have done.

Former_MSE_Dan · 15 May 2012 at 2:29PM

Hi folks,

We have been looking into this deeply, and are close to finalising what we are going to do about it.

Thanks for the info you've all provided in this thread

Dan

Experian_company_representative · 15 May 2012 at 3:19PM

Clearly this involves another credit reference agency (CRA) but I think I understand the issue...

Because the insurer is quoting not just the price of their premium but also a price should you choose to pay using instalments (ie premium plus interest), they are undertaking credit quotation searches with a CRA.

This is becoming standard practice in the insurance industry. They will have your permission to do this, either directly or via a third party, and some will have your permission to requote you on the aniversary of your original quote on an ongoing basis after that.

Importantly, these are credit quotations and not credit applications. Or at least they should be. As others have said, only applications can be fed into credit scoring. Quotations have no affect on scores at all.

If the search type isn't very clear on the other CRA's report I suggest you ask the CRA to clarify exactly what type of search has been recorded. I suspect though that 'Insurance (Credit)' relates to the product (insurance on credit) and not to the search type (a quote for this).

Hope this helps.

James Jones

Former_MSE_Dan · 16 May 2012 at 2:29PM

Can folk who have seen this appearing on their credit file please let me know which Credit reference agency they checked with, if you've two mins to spare.

Thanks

Dan

zen135 · 16 May 2012 at 2:51PM

These searches by Aviva (5 searches during a 6-month period) were done on my CallCredit credit report. My Equifax and Experian reports don't show any record of these searches.

asz · 16 May 2012 at 3:35PM

Hi, Mine are showing on noddle/callcredit. Do not have a current experian & equifax report to double check.
asz

JimmyTheWig · 16 May 2012 at 4:16PM

Mine are showing on Noddle.
Don't know about the others.

Karen40_2 · 16 May 2012 at 6:27PM

Hiya
I also have these searches on my noddle report !! It says general insurance credit search and I certainly haven't got insurance from them. None on equifax that I can see. Don't have experian report yet.

Credit searches by Aviva Central Services

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