What is your Score and what it means to lenders
Your credit score is a figure produced by credit bureaus and is made available to any potential lenders who will be checking your credit report after you have made an application with them.
The lender will see how high your credit score is and can sometimes make an immediate decision based on the figure.
Knowing your credit score is one of the best financial decisions you can make. UKCreditRatings.com offers you the chance to see your score for free!
The credit score is produced using a mathematical model that takes into account a variety of factors.
These factors include such things as your age, your time at a particular address, your current financial situation, your current debts and payments and the amount of applications that you have made.
A lot of information is made available when you give a potential lender permission to search your credit report, so it pays to know what your score is and whether the information held by your report is correct or not.
Knowing your credit score means you can properly judge whether you feel a lender is likely to accept you or not.
Applications which are turned down do not effect the score, it doesn't say if an application is accepted or declined.
However, if your score is high and you feel confident about being accepted, it gives you the power to shop around and possibly apply with a lender offering better APR rates.
If you see your score is low, don't be too disheartened, as there are ways of rebuilding your score to a healthy level.
Making payments on time and clearing debts is a good way to start, reducing the amount of credit cards and store cards you hold can also help. Avoid having too many "footprints" (searches made by potential lenders) on your report as this has a negative impact on loan decisions.
A credit score may only be a number, but that number says a lot about you and it is a very important number too. Knowing your score gives you a great head-start when it comes to filling out a loan or mortgage application.
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