Credit Reference Agencies What is a credit reference agency? Credit reference agencies are organisations that collect and store financial and publicly available information about almost every adult in the UK. Who are the credit reference agencies?
Callcredit Limited
One Park Lane
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS3 1EP | Experian
Talbot House
Talbot Street
Nottingham
NG80 1TH |
Equifax
Credit File Advice Centre
PO Box 1140
Bradford
BD1 5US |
These are the three credit reference agencies in the UK, each will let you request your credit file online or by post, usually for a fee. Where do they get the information? The agencies get their information from lending institutions and organisations around the country, it is up to the organisations themselves as to which agency they supply their information to - see the problem section below! What do they do with the information? The information each agency collects is collated and then supplied back to lenders and other organisations to help them in establishing an individual's identity, credit history, current credit commitments, the information also allows lenders to confirm the address provided by an applicant to help prevent fraud. Do credit reference agencies black list people? In a word - no, the blacklist theory has been around for years, their is no such thing as a credit black list, a lender will either accept you as a client based on your credit file, credit score and other criteria or they will not, the agencies have no say in who will or will not get credit. What is a credit score? The information on your credit report together with the information you provide on an application form can be used to build a credit score. This is a rating that can be used to identify the risk in offering you credit - they are not affected by gender, race etc - and there is no single format for working out a credit score - different lenders take different factors into account when building their score. Baker Financial use every lender who could help - some lenders credit score and some lenders don't, if you are not sure how best to proceed - contact us today
The problem with having 3 different credit reference agencies It may interest you to know that no one credit agency holds a complete list of information - problems can (and do) arise when applying for finance such as a mortgage or remortgage - especially when bad credit is involved. Example: You request your credit report from agency 'A', and submit an application based on that report - the lender uses credit reference agency 'C' , their report has a CCJ
listed which was not on agency 'A's report - you can imagine the results! - This happens more often than you would think, even with mortgage packagers who are supposed to eliminate this sort of thing. Do we apply for a credit report from each agency? - this would cure the problem but its costly and if you have never seen a credit report before they can be awkward to read (and you would have 3 of them)  Baker Financial have processes in place to eliminate things like this happening, firstly we have teamed up with CreditExpert from Experian
- offering a free 30 days access to your credit report online.
After the 30 days have ended CreditExpert charge £6.99 per month
for this service. If you do not want continued access to your credit report and other services simply cancel the free trial period before the 30 days are up and no charges will apply, if you do want continued access to your report, simply do nothing, the first 30 days are still free. The other processes for avoiding the problem associated with 3 separate agencies are dependent on your circumstances but we very rarely have any unknown credit popping-up after an application has been submitted. you may also be interested in
Income & Affordability explained
Loan to Value Explained For further information about credit reference agencies, you can contact either the Citizens Advice Bureau or any one of the credit reference sites, they all have FAQ's and consumer information which you will find useful. And Finally All credit reference agencies must be licensed by the Office of Fair Trading under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 -they must also register with the Office of the Information Commissioner. Baker Financial already deal with every lender who could help – contact us today
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