Credit Reports

Credit reports are a means of assessing an individual for the purpose of extending credit to them. Each and every time you take out a loan, pay for something on credit, or take out a new credit card account, an entry of such is listed in your credit report. At a glance, a potential creditor can look at your financial history and make a judgement as to whether or not you are deemed credit worthy. It goes to say therefore that your credit report is an important document and you should ensure that you know what is on it, and to protect your credit status at all times.

What is a Credit Report?

As mentioned, a credit report lists your credit history, but it goes much further than that. A credit report also lists the balances on your loans, credit cards or other credit accounts, whether or not you make your payments on time or have been routinely late with payments, and it also lists any loan defaults that you may have had against your name and if any action has been taken against you to recover those debts.

So you can see, any loan company can easily determine if you are a credit risk or would be a good customer just by obtaining a copy of your credit report.

What specific information is on a credit report?

Generally speaking, credit reports contain four different categories of information:

Personal details – This is information to identify you as a person, such as full name and date of birth, current and previous addresses, telephone numbers, social security number (or, depending on what country you are living in, other forms of national identification numbers), and current and past employers. Similar information about your spouse may also be included on your file.

Credit details – Your credit details will list all loans that you have had, any department store accounts (past and present), any credit card accounts that you have, mortgages, student loans, any accounts with utility companies and any other form of official credit that you either have or have applied for. Also listed will be the account balances for all of the aforementioned, as well as your payment history and any co-signatories or guarantors.

Public record details – Any court judgements that have been made against you will be listed. In many cases this is just limited to financial judgements, but there are occasions when non-financial judgements are also listed.

Recent activity details – Also listed on your credit report will be the names of anyone who has accessed details of your credit report over the last two years or so. This is good from the point of view that you can see for yourself who is accessing your file, but it is also bad as too many ‘footprints’ on your file can influence some lenders to decline you for credit.