Improving your credit rating doesn’t have to be hard even though many people think it will be.  To show you what we mean, here are some ways you can simply boost your chances of getting credit.

Know your situation
The first thing to improving anything is knowing what’s there to begin with.  The UK’s largest credit reference agency is Experian and you can sign up for a free 30 day trial which will let you have a look at your record, or you can pay £2 for a statutory report.  This report will change over time, so it’s worth checking it every so often.

Check for Mistakes
Once you’ve got your credit report, you can check it for errors as even the slightest error here can make a big difference to your financial situation.

Look for things like:

• Money that you’ve paid off but which is still showing as outstanding
• Multiple credit searches from the same company relating to the same application
• Incorrect address details – sometimes being linked to an address where there’s been outstanding debt can bring up issues which aren’t yours.
• Links to people you are no longer linked to – i.e. if you’ve split with a partner and therefore broken any financial ties you had, but are still showing as linked to them on your credit report.
• Information that you don’t recognise – if there’s activity there you don’t recognise, it could relate to fraudulent activity where someone has taken credit in your name.

If you find any incorrect information on the report, contact the credit reference agency who issued the report immediately and ask them to investigate this.

Protect your identity
If you’re worried about someone trying to steal your identity, or if you’ve found fraudulent activity on your credit report that has needed investigation, you could sign up for protective registration with CIFAS the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service.  It costs about £15 and will stop any applications for credit going through without them doing super stringent ID checks.

Close Unused Accounts
It might surprise you to learn that if you’ve paid off a credit card, and it has a £0 balance, that it could still affect your credit rating.  Not using a credit card and having it sat there dormant doesn’t mean it is ignored.  It’s still an active account and therefore you potentially have credit on it.  Lenders assess how much credit you already have access to, and the more credit you have, the less they may want to offer you, so close the dormant account and potentially improve your rating.
Ask for a Quote rather than filling in an application
When you fill in an application for credit, lenders will search your report.  Each time this happens a footprint is left showing that someone has done a search on you, and these footprints are visible to other lenders.  Some lenders see lots of applications as a sign that you might be overstretching yourself financially and may be getting desperate, so rather than filling in an application to find out if you’d get something, ask them to do you a quote instead.  Then, if you decide not to take up this loan or credit card etc. you can then also ask them to remove records if they’ve accessed your credit report more than is necessary.

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