Credit Scores

Jabberwocky said:
I work for a major bank on various projects including mortgages. During decisioning we take feeds from 2 CRA’s which feed into the overall credit strategy.

May not be the only consideration but it is one. Ultimately, you’re not getting the best rate if you have a history of missing payments and you’re not getting the level of borrowing you probably need if your outstanding debt impacts affordability checks.

I get alerts on mine when there’s new credit applications and generally ignore the monthly updates alerts if I’ve heard nowt
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That isnt them checking the credit score though is it? Theyre checking the credit history / file which is different.
 


Bob Fleming said:
That was my understanding from the broker who did mine. They use the affordability checks based on your income/ outgoings then go for credit references if you pass that. Or the other way round.

Not sure how anyone can say it's meaningless. How else would they be checking defaults, undeclared loans and CCJs etc if not using a credit reference agency?
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That is entirely different to looking at the 'score' though.
 
makumstu said:
Most banks have or are moving over to IRB, a throw back to the old days of if the bank doesn't know you then they won't be lending to you. They've took too many hits and fines due to bad lending based on CRA data.
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Aye, a lot of the high street banks don't put their credit cards onto the clearscore offers & whatnot. You need an account with them to get one. There will be something feeding in from credit reports as 2 months ago I was maxed out on a few of my stoozing cards & needed a new one. Nationwide was one of my last options, but wouldn't give me one. And now yesterday they give me one (since I've cleared one of the cards after the 0% offer ended). But the actual score is meaningless since mine hasn't changed in months yet had different outcomes during the period.
 
James said:
That is entirely different to looking at the 'score' though.
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Ah Ok I see what you mean. But don't entirely agree.
The 'score' is the at a glance indication that the particular reference agency use. The lenders will use their own criteria for lending. They are still using the same data.

So checking your credit score is a quick indication of whether you may have a good score. Whether it's gone up or down. Checking your credit score is really just monitoring your credit file.
 
Bob Fleming said:
That was my understanding from the broker who did mine. They use the affordability checks based on your income/ outgoings then go for credit references if you pass that. Or the other way round.

Not sure how anyone can say it's meaningless. How else would they be checking defaults, undeclared loans and CCJs etc if not using a credit reference agency?
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There's different levels for different customers. If you have a relationship with the lender they can use internal data to run as many up front checks as possible. Then it goes to external data sources and then to asking the customer to send in pay slips etc. Open source API's are making things a bit slicker, a couple CRA's are building products while will link directly to major employers and HMRC for income verification so in theory most decisions will be able to be made in real time unless you have really complex payslips.
FishburnMackem said:
That isnt them checking the credit score though is it? Theyre checking the credit history / file which is different.
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As above, scores go into an overall credit strategies. They're quite complex, and the variables applied are based on the LTV, application ,value income etc etc. Scores alone won't be the sole risk/ affordability indicator but play into the overall logic. The scores are intrinsically linked to the items in the credit file anyway for the most part. If you have missed payments you'll have a low score. Some CRA's don't lower scores for multiple credit applications and unutilised credit but others do. Down to the individual credit strategy being applied as to what factors are applied. You'll probably find that making an application with a low credit score will automatically result in being subject to enhanced underwriting checks. If the reasons for the low score are acceptable within the credit strategy then an offer will still follow.
 
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Bob Fleming said:
Ah Ok I see what you mean. But don't entirely agree.
The 'score' is the at a glance indication that the particular reference agency use. The lenders will use their own criteria for lending. They are still using the same data.

So checking your credit score is a quick indication of whether you may have a good score. Whether it's gone up or down. Checking your credit score is really just monitoring your credit file.
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Aye agreed, it's a good indicator but there's no need to get fixated on whether the score is going up or down much.
 
I keep an eye on mine in the wider context of it being a headline figure at the top of a report. I'm trying to pay off some debt at the minute so I keep an eye on the report to make sure I'm not missing owt, generally it's good to see the score going up but it's what's in the report that's important.
 
I have a loan that is on its final payment this month, credit card used about £100 and randomly this month credit score dropped by 49, it’s like WTF.
 
safc1981 said:
I have a loan that is on its final payment this month, credit card used about £100 and randomly this month credit score dropped by 49, it’s like WTF.
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Were all payments made on time?
Have you done a few searches for other loans or cards etc?

Too many searches can apparently affect the score.
 
I never have a balance on my credit card and jump from card to card to get the best cash back/ offers etc.
A a result I have a potential unsecured risk of around £60k as the card providers of the cards I held just kept putting up the maximum limit as I was a good payer.

The credit reference agencies highlighted this as bad as I could potentially go on a massive spending spree.
So I spent an hour cancelling off my old unused cards to remove this risk and return my score back to what it should be.

The scoring services saw this a positive and as a result starting offering me more credit cards.

Go figure.
 
safc1981 said:
Literally not done a thing.
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Mine dropped recently and I couldn't understand why, turned out I'd made a monthly payment to my PayPal credit which resulted in me using less than a certain percentage of my available credit. So in effect I had less debt so they lowered my score 🤷‍♂️
 
STUMPY said:
Mine dropped recently and I couldn't understand why, turned out I'd made a monthly payment to my PayPal credit which resulted in me using less than a certain percentage of my available credit. So in effect I had less debt so they lowered my score 🤷‍♂️
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Yup, mine dropped when I'd paid off my very and previous to that when I'd had my Argos card removed due to not spending on it. They want / need you to have debt, a high impact on my report is that I should be getting more credit (which I don't want).
 

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