with the Aid of your Credit Report

| Author: Clariman | Created: 20/01/2008 |

In this short article, we explain how you can use your credit report to help you with your rate tarting activities.

When you apply for a new credit card the lender will contact one or more of the Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) to do a credit check on you. The CRAs maintain a detailed history of your credit agreements, payment history, previous credit checks, address, presence on the electoral roll and publicly available information such as CCJs etc.

Why you should get a copy of your credit history

Anyone contemplating or rate-tarting should look at their credit history for the following reasons:

• If you can see the same information that the lenders see, then you are better equipped to understand their lending decisions.
• There may be mistakes in your credit history. You have a legal right to dispute mistakes and have them corrected. If you have not corrected them, then lenders could refuse credit based on inaccurate information.
• You may have credit lines still open that you are unaware of e.g. a store card that you took out and then never used again or a credit card that you thought you had closed but is still open. This is much more common than you might think.
• You may find that you have some older credit cards you use which are not reported to the CRAs. It can be useful to know that you have some available credit which is not seen by other lenders.
• Your credit history is invaluable in fine-tuning your rate-tarting activities.
• With the increasing publicity of Identity-theft, many CRAs advertise their chargeable services as offering protection against Identity theft. The CRAs are undoubtedly exploiting the fear factor and emphasising the threat in order to sell their services, but viewing your credit report would highlight any unexpected applications which had been due to ID theft.

Where can you get a copy of your credit history?

In the UK, there are 3 CRAs that are used by lenders:
Experian, equifax and CallCredit.

Experian is probably the most widely used, then Equifax and then CallCredit: the newest CRA. They each offer a number of different ways of accessing your credit report which vary by cost, how they are delivered (online or postal) and whether they provide unlimited access or a single copy.

If you want to see your credit report completely free of charge, then there is probably no better way to do so than to use the free 30-day trial of the Experian credit report

This service allows you to check your credit report online at any time. It should be noted that this is a trial for a chargeable service from Experian and you must cancel within 30 days if you do not wish to pay the monthly fee for the service. Equifax and callcredit offer a similar service. For a complete list of the CRAs and ways to get your credit report, including the statutory report which is posted out to you at a cost of £2, please view our table.

How to use your credit history to help with rate-tarting

Protecting or improving a credit rating is very important to the rate tart because the inability to get another 0% Balance Transfer deal means significantly increased debt repayments. The rate-tart needs to be able to get additional cheap credit while paying off real debt, so his/her credit rating is very important.
Serious rate tarts who are paying off debts should check their credit histories regularly. However, you may want to do this while minimising your expenses, so consider making use of free trials and the statutory reports which cost only £2.

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