Free Credit Reports

With today’s global downturn, there has never been a more important period to check your borrowing history. The majority of the population haven’t a clue about the criteria financiers use to score their applications in obtaining credit – and it predictably isn’t as simple as you might imagine.

Indicators such as missed installments on personal loans and plastic undoubtedly make or break banks aprrovals, but did you know that you may be declined a mortgage because you have never had credit? It sounds ridiculous, but in fact banks need both to hear that you aren’t already overstretched, but too that you have a track history of making up installments.

For this reason, creditors you have previously borrowed from provide credit reference companies such as Equifax and Experian with details on how you handle your credit facilities.

Another thing we most likely don’t realise is debt files aren’t limited to credit cards, loans and mortgages. If you have a post-pay mobile phone that is almost always shown on your debt history too. How about your satellite company service? Yep, that’s qualifying as debt as well.

Any product that allows you to generate an invoice could be considered borrowing. By examining your debt file, you may well be amazed to find that you’ve been giving future lenders more detail than you realise, or even worse still, incomplete information! Only by buying your borrowing report will you see what the lenders can see – in entirety, all they see. There will be no credit black lists, it’s all done by formulae made up of the credit risk picture made up by the info on your application and your debt file.

The good news is that you can take immediate action to increase your credit appearance – for example checking that you are correctly included on the electoral roll. For more good guidance, head over for the free trial of your debt history below – there’s no pressure to continue and subscribe so it is entirely risk free. Many people do continue beyond their trial though, as the low cost product could save them a lot of inconvenience in the longer term.

So, why not make an effort to help yourself immediately and order a free trial? The Free Stuff website have joined up with Experian to give a trial at no cost which means you can see everything on your credit report. It’s all on the web, so you could be seeing everything the bank manager can see in several minutes time!