Scores & Files
The score you are shown is not the score lenders use
Consumer credit scores are a product. Lenders build their own models from the underlying file data.
Emil Rasmussen
Contributing writer, The Credit Question
Emil writes about credit files and the difference between the score you see and the one lenders build.
Contact Emil through our contact page — mark your message for their attention and it will be passed on.
22 articles
Scores & Files
Utilisation matters more than most people expect
The proportion of available credit you are using is a strong signal, and it bites well below the limit.
Scores & Files
The credit blacklist does not exist
There is no central list of banned borrowers. What people are describing is usually one of four ordinary and fixable things.
Scores & Files
How long adverse marks last, and what happens the day they drop off
Negative entries have a defined lifespan rather than an indefinite one, and the effect of ageing starts long before removal.
Scores & Files
Address history is doing more work than you think
Before any score is calculated, a lender has to be satisfied you are who you say you are and live where you say you live.
Scores & Files
Closed accounts keep counting for years
Closing a card does not erase its history, and in some ways it makes the file worse rather than tidier.
Scores & Files
Scoring models are statistical, not moral
A scorecard is a prediction about a population, applied to you. Understanding that explains most of its odd behaviour.
Scores & Files
Settled, satisfied and partially settled are three different outcomes
The status word attached to a closed debt changes how every future lender reads it, and the differences are not intuitive.
Scores & Files
Your file updates on a schedule nobody tells you about
Credit data arrives in batches, so the file lenders read is usually a few weeks behind the account you are actually running.
Scores & Files
Court judgments and insolvency records on a credit file
Public record entries carry more weight with lenders than almost anything else on a file, and the rules around them are strictly…
Protection
What a lender must tell you when it declines you
A refusal comes with information rights in most regulated markets, and asking for them is how you find out what actually went wrong.
Protection
When a loan should not have been granted in the first place
Responsible lending rules place the duty to check affordability on the lender, and complaints about failures to do so are a real…
Protection
Withdrawal and cancellation rights on a new credit agreement
Many jurisdictions give a short window to walk away from a credit agreement you have just signed, and the clock is unforgiving.
Protection
Vulnerability, illness and the support you have to ask for
Regulated lenders in many countries are expected to make adjustments for customers in difficult circumstances, and almost none of…
Protection
What happens to debts when someone dies
Debts are generally settled from the estate rather than inherited, and the exceptions are the ones that catch families out.
Scores & Files
Payment history is read by recency, not by tally
Models care far more about what happened last month than about what happened three years ago, which changes how recovery works.
Scores & Files
Credit builder accounts and what they actually report
Products sold as score-builders work through one narrow mechanism, and several of the ones on sale do not use it at all.
Scores & Files
The length of your credit history is quietly doing work
How long your accounts have existed is one of the least discussed scoring inputs, and the easiest one to damage by accident.
Scores & Files
Rent and utility reporting schemes have limits worth knowing
Schemes that put regular household payments onto a credit file can help a thin record, and they report the bad months too.
Scores & Files
A business debt can end up on your personal file
The separation between company borrowing and personal borrowing is thinner than most owners assume, and it fails at predictable…
Protection
Authorised push payment fraud and the contested refund
When you were tricked into sending the money yourself, the payment was technically authorised, and that word decides everything…
Protection
Untangling joint finances when a relationship ends
Separating a household is an administrative process as much as an emotional one, and the credit consequences outlast the…