The score on a credit app is a summary an agency calculates for you, to make its own report understandable. When you apply for a mortgage, a car loan or a phone contract, the lender does not receive it. The lender receives the report, and then runs its own scorecard over the report using information the agency has never had — your income, your employment, your deposit, and whether you have banked with them for nine years without incident.
So two people with the same agency score can get different answers, and one person can be accepted by one lender and refused by another in the same week. The report is what to work on.
What is on the file
Three credit reference agencies operate in the UK — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. They hold broadly similar things:
- Your accounts — credit cards, loans, mortgages, overdrafts, car finance, mobile contracts, and increasingly some buy-now-pay-later agreements. Each shows the limit, the current balance and how long it has been open.
- Your payment history, usually as a rolling grid of the last several years, month by month. This is the single most important part of the file.
- Public records — county court judgments, bankruptcies, individual voluntary arrangements, debt relief orders.
- Searches — every time someone looked, and whether it was a hard search you can be judged on or a soft search only you can see.
- Your address history and electoral roll registration, used to confirm you are who you say you are.
- Financial associations — anyone you hold a joint financial product with.
The three agencies do not hold the same data. Lenders choose which agencies to report to, and many report to one or two rather than all three. So an account that appears on your Equifax file may be missing from TransUnion entirely. They also use different scales and different weightings, so the three scores cannot be compared. Comparing the three reports can show forgotten accounts and errors.
You have a right under UK data protection law to see the information each agency holds about you, and all three provide free access to it. Doing all three takes about half an hour, once.
What a poor file costs
Take a £12,000 car loan over four years. Someone with a clean, well-established file is typically offered a rate near the front of the market; someone with recent missed payments is offered something near the back. Using an illustrative 9.9% APR and 24.9% APR to represent those two ends:
At 9.9% APR: £301.35 a month. Total repaid £14,464.68.
At 24.9% APR: £380.96 a month. Total repaid £18,285.87.
The difference: £79.61 every month, and £3,821 over the four years for the same car.
That £3,821 is roughly a full emergency fund for a household with £1,000 a month of essential outgoings. The same gap applies to mortgage rates, credit card rates and insurance premiums.
Six things that change the file
1. Pay on time, every time. Payment history carries more weight than everything else combined. Set up a direct debit on every credit commitment for at least the minimum, dated a few days after payday. A missed payment usually only reaches the file once it is a full month late.
2. Use less of what you have. Lenders look at your balance against your limit. Someone using £4,500 of a £5,000 card limit looks stretched even if they never miss a payment; someone using £900 of it does not. Bringing balances down helps, and so does keeping an old card open with a low balance rather than closing it, because closing it removes the limit and pushes your usage percentage up overnight.
3. Get on the electoral register. This is free and takes five minutes at gov.uk/register-to-vote. It lets a lender confirm your name and address instantly. Without it, applications get referred to manual checks or refused on identity grounds alone.
4. Stop applying repeatedly. A hard search is recorded every time you formally apply, and several in a short period read as somebody trying everywhere. Use eligibility checkers, which leave a soft search only you can see, and space out real applications.
5. Let age accumulate. A long-held account with a clean record helps. Closing your oldest card can make your file worse.
6. Check for things that are simply wrong. An address you never lived at, an account that is not yours, a settled debt still showing a balance, an old joint account linking you to an ex-partner. Every agency has a free dispute process, and it has to investigate.
What stays, and for how long
Six years is the standard period for the serious markers. A default drops off six years after the default date, whether or not you pay it. County court judgments follow the same rule: GOV.UK states that records of judgments are kept for six years unless you pay the full amount within a month, in which case the record is removed. Pay after that month and the judgment is marked as satisfied but stays on the register for the full term. Individual late payments also sit on the file for six years, though they weigh far less than a default.
Hard searches are typically visible to other lenders for around twelve months.
Nothing shortens the six-year clock. If a firm offers to remove accurate negative information for a fee, that service does not exist. Free help with problem debt is available from StepChange, National Debtline and MoneyHelper today.
Financial associations
A financial association is created when you hold a joint financial product with someone: a joint mortgage, a joint loan, a joint current account. Once the link exists, a lender assessing you can see their file too, and their missed payments can weigh on your application.
Only a joint financial product creates a link; living at the same address or being married does not. The link does not end on its own when the product ends — you have to ask each agency for a notice of disassociation.
If you have closed a joint account, check that the association has gone.
Checking your file
- Pull all three reports. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Free from each.
- Read the accounts list line by line. Anything you do not recognise, anything closed that shows as open, anything settled that shows a balance — write it down.
- Check your address history and electoral roll status. Register if you are not on it.
- Check your financial associations. Request disassociation for anything that has ended.
- Add up your limits and your balances. If your balances are more than about a quarter of your total limits, that is the number to work on next.
- Dispute the errors, then diarise a re-check for three months' time. Corrections can take weeks.
Official sourcesFree, impartial and government-backed guidance on credit reports and credit scores is at MoneyHelper. The rules on county court judgments and the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines are at GOV.UK: county court judgments for debt. Register to vote at gov.uk/register-to-vote. Your rights over the data an agency holds, and how to complain if a correction is refused, are set out by the Information Commissioner's Office. You can check that any firm is authorised on the Financial Services Register at register.fca.org.uk. The 9.9% and 24.9% APRs used above are illustrative rates chosen to show the arithmetic, not quotations or product recommendations.
Where coaching fits
Reading your own credit report is not financial advice. Buzz Money Coach helps you get the facts straight and put the numbers in order.
Coaching is not regulated financial advice, and we do not recommend credit cards, loans, mortgages, pensions or investments. Where a decision needs a regulated adviser we say so, and can introduce you to Equity & General, authorised and regulated by the FCA (No. 474163) — optional, with no obligation, and they pay us a commission if you proceed. If you are weighing up which kind of help you need, our guide on coaches and advisers sets out the difference.
For a wider view of your money, the free Financial Freedom Score takes about seven minutes and names one next step.