Reacting to MoneySavingExpert’s report of 27 August 2026, “TransUnion to change millions of people’s credit scores – but it’s what’s on your credit FILE that matters most”, and to TransUnion UK’s own announcement of 26 August 2026 launching its next-generation consumer credit score. Every borrowing rate below is the Bank of England’s published average, and every statement about your legal rights is read straight from the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance, with the arithmetic shown so you can check it.
Our view
Our view: a credit score is an agency’s summary of your file, on a scale the agency chose. TransUnion’s redesign looks like an improvement, and it changes everybody’s number without changing any fact about anybody.
Read the file the score summarises; it is free. On the worked example below, the difference between a file lenders accept and one they do not can be over £2,000 in interest over three years on ordinary household debts.
What TransUnion has announced
TransUnion is one of the credit reference agencies that compile the record British lenders check. On 26 August it announced a new consumer score with a wider range, 0–999 instead of 0–710, reaching its credit monitoring partners on a phased rollout from late September 2026 to June 2027. MoneySavingExpert has said its own Credit Club will not show updated figures until at least late October 2026.
The bands are renamed and renumbered. “Poor” becomes Low and “Very poor” becomes Very low. The new bands run: Very low 0–487, Low 488–562, Fair 563–652, Good 653–785, Excellent 786–999. The score itself is a different calculation too, built on trended data — how account balances have moved over time and how credit cards are used — rather than the single snapshot behind the old one. TransUnion’s James Robinson, Managing Director of Consumer Interactive, framed it as a response to “significant confusion among consumers about what credit scores mean”.
TransUnion’s release says: “The information shared with organisations about an individual’s credit history will remain unchanged.”
Per MoneySavingExpert’s reporting, most people land in the same band — 58% stay put, 36% move up a band and 6% move down. A move down does not change your file.
Old and new scores cannot be compared
Suppose your TransUnion score today is 610. On a scale that stops at 710, that sits 86% of the way up, comfortably inside the old “Good” band of 604–627. Now imagine a number in the low 600s appearing on a scale that runs to 999. The same digits read as roughly 61% of the way up, and can look like a fall.
The new score is a different calculation on a different range, so the two cannot be compared. If your number moves this autumn and your spending, borrowing and payment history did not, the movement does not reflect anything about you.
What the file is worth, in pounds
The price of credit is set from the file. The Bank of England publishes what households pay. In its Money and Credit release for June 2026, the effective rate on interest-charging credit cards was 21.49%, on interest-charging overdrafts 21.17%, and on new personal loans to individuals 9.67%. Bank Rate, for context, has been 3.75% since 18 December 2025.
Illustrative household, using the Bank of England’s June 2026 average rates. Not a recommendation to borrow, consolidate or move anything.
A household carrying £3,400 on a credit card and sitting £1,200 into an overdraft — £4,600 of ordinary, unremarkable debt.
- Card: £3,400 at 21.49% = £730.66 a year.
- Overdraft: £1,200 at 21.17% = £254.04 a year.
- Total interest: £984.70 a year — £82.06 a month, with the £4,600 still owed.
Now the same £4,600 borrowed at the average new personal loan rate of 9.67% over three years. The monthly payment works out at £146.85, total repaid £5,286.57, so the interest is £686.57, and the debt is repaid after 36 months.
Three years of the first version costs £2,954.10 in interest and still leaves £4,600 outstanding. Three years of the second costs £686.57 and leaves nothing outstanding. The gap in interest alone is £2,267.53.
Access to the cheaper rate depends on what is on your file: payment history, defaults, addresses and errors.
The Bank of England figures are averages, and many households pay more than 21.49% on a card.
What is on the file, and four things to check
According to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the three main consumer credit reference agencies in the UK are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, and they are licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority. Their files hold how you have handled credit and utility accounts, your previous addresses, and public information including the electoral roll, county court judgments, and bankruptcy and insolvency data. Our full guide, your credit report, explains each section and how long entries stay on the file.
When you open yours, check four things:
- Accounts you do not recognise. The clearest early sign of identity fraud, and the reason to check all three agencies rather than one.
- Your addresses. The ICO advises listing every address you have lived at in the last six years when you request your file. An old or mistyped address can lead to a declined application.
- Your electoral roll entry. It is on the file, it is easy to fix, and it may be wrong if you have moved recently. Registering to vote on GOV.UK takes about five minutes.
- Financial associations. A joint account or old joint mortgage links someone else’s record to yours, and the link stays until you ask for it to be removed.
Two things to do this week
One: order your statutory report from all three agencies. It is free. The ICO says you have the right to request the information held about your financial standing, “making this request is free of charge”, and there is “no obligation on anyone” to sign up to a monthly monitoring subscription to get it. Look for the phrase statutory report: Experian, Equifax, TransUnion. Do all three, because lenders choose which agencies they report to and an account can appear on one file and be absent from another. Each agency has one month from receiving your request to respond, and may ask for proof of name and address first.
Two: if something is wrong, contact the lender as well as the agency. The ICO’s position is that if an entry carries a company’s name, that company is generally responsible for it, and the agency “cannot amend this data without the permission of that company” — while lenders can push a correction through directly. So write to both, and start with whoever put the entry there. Where the entry is disputed rather than plainly wrong, you can ask for a Notice of Correction: your own short statement attached to that entry, which anyone searching your file will see and should take into account.
What is still uncertain
First, when your app switches — the rollout runs from late September 2026 to June 2027 and TransUnion has not published a partner-by-partner schedule, so your number may change this month or next summer. Second, whether any lender adopts the new score in its own decisions. TransUnion has confirmed the underlying data shared with organisations is unchanged, but lenders build their own scorecards on that data and none has said publicly what it will do with the new number. Third, whether Experian and Equifax follow. Neither has announced a comparable change, so the three agencies will continue to use different scales.
Where coaching ends. Reading your credit file, fixing errors on it and understanding what drives the cost of borrowing is coaching territory, and it is all here. We do not choose or arrange credit products. Buzz Money Coach is a trading style of Buzz Accounting Ltd, which is not authorised by the FCA to give regulated financial advice and does not give it. If the debt has become unmanageable, go to free debt advice first. StepChange, National Debtline and MoneyHelper give free, independent, properly regulated debt help today.
To see where your money goes, start with our budgeting basics guide, then read how to clear debt and try your own figures in the debt payoff calculator. If you are preparing for a mortgage, the first-time buyer guide explains what lenders weigh alongside it.