The UK has three main credit reporting agencies. These companies receive varying degrees of borrower credit data from lenders, information about borrowers from voting rolls, data on court judgments, bankruptcies and the like from courts and various other pieces of data from other sources, and aggregate it all into a credit report. They the supply these reports on demand to borrowers and to prospective lenders who would like to evaluate these borrowers’ credit worthiness.
The three major credit reporting agencies in the UK are Equifax, Experian and CallCredit.
The differences between the three
Seeing three different agencies typically leads borrowers to ask, “shouldn’t I just get a report from one of them? Isn’t all my information the same?” The answer to these questions is definitely no.
Each separate agency has its own unique agreement with lenders that determines the nature of information shared. There are some lenders out there that pick and choose which credit reporting agency they do business with. Some might, for example, choose only to report to CallCredit. Others might report to all three. What this means to borrowers is that obtaining a copy of a credit report from only one of the three agencies will most likely lead to an incomplete view of credit health.
Frequency: how often should I get a copy of my credit report?
A credit report is crucial to consumers for a number of reasons:
- Prevent identity fraud
- Fix credit disputes
- Start working on repairing bad credit
- Plan for large purchases
- Negotiate for the best deal with lenders
Now, some of these reasons, such as “negotiate for the best deal with lenders” and “plan for large purchases” only happen once in a while. Knowing this, you may believe you only need to get a copy of your credit report once in a while, like when shopping for a mortgage. But consider the other factors like “prevent identity fraud” and “fix credit disputes.” The only way to effectively cover these is to et a copy of your credit report frequently, probably monthly.
Consider identity theft. If someone has opened accounts in your name and is running up credit making fraudulent purchases, is it okay to find out about this in 3-4 months? By then, damage has been done that can take a very long time to repair. If you found out about it just a few weeks down the line, it would be so much easier to resolve the issue with the credit card company and possibly even get the crooks arrested.
What if your mortgage company made a mistake and lost your last payment? If you let that sort of large default sit too long, your credit could be ruined and you might even lose your home. By getting a copy of your credit report monthly, you could find out about these issues quickly and resolve them before they destroy your credit and cause foreclosure.
Again, keep in mind how important it is that you receive a copy of your credit report frequently AND from all three agencies. Getting a monthly report from Equifax, for example, doesn’t help if your mortgage broker only reported your errant lack of payment to Experian. Getting a monthly copy of your credit report from all three of the main UK credit reporting agencies is the very best way to know exactly what your credit health looks like at all times and is vital to being at the ready to fix problems quickly.
Other services
The “big three” credit reporting agencies also have other services available to consumers outside of their regular on demand credit report services. For additional fees, these companies offer helpful services like:
- Online access: Instead of waiting, customers can log in and access their credit report online any time.
- Alerting: different services have different levels of this, but it is essentially a service where customers are notified whenever credit is opened in their name.
- Weekly updates: email notifications of status changes and other credit activity, sent on a regular basis.
- Fraud insurance: coverage in case of fraud to help cover costs of resolving issues related to fraud and identity theft. This really helps if accounts are frozen or bank overdrafts occur as a result of fraud.
