Free Credit Score

Your credit score is important as this rating will determine just how credit referencing agencies use it. Of course the higher the score the less risk of lending to you by a bank or other financial organisation will be. If you have a very low score you may need to contact specialist agencies who still may be able to lend to you.

What are the credit ratings ?

There are generally five ranges of scores that you can fall into depending on what loans you have and how well you repay them. The scoring provides a number in the range of 0 to 1000 as follows :

  • Excellent - 961-999 - if you are in this range you are a very low risk and most lenders will provide credit to you
  • Good - 881 - 960 - this category also provides a low risk to most lenders and people in this band have little problem in repaying their credit
  • Fair - 721 - 880 - this is a moderate risk category and again most people would be able to repay their loans on time although a few will have serious problems
  • Poor - 561 - 720 - this is the first high risk category and a high proportion here would have problems in repaying loans and credit
  • Very poor - 0 - 560 - this is the very high risk cateogory and almost all people here would have serious problems in repaying credit and most lenders would not lend to people in the very poor category.

What's my credit score ?

The only way to find out what your credit score is to get one of the credit referencing agencies to provide this information to you. You can get a free credit report by logging into one of the three agencies websites. It doesn't really matter which one you use unless you have been turned down for credit or a loan then you should ask the lender which agency they are using so you can see the same information that they have.

You can improve your credit score in a number of ways. For example if you are not on the electoral roll then it's actually unlikely that you'll receive any credit. You can sign up immediately using the government's own website. Also making a lot of applications in a short period of time is going to set alarm bells ringing for most lenders so if you need to apply for a new credit card, short term loan and mortgage then spread these applications out over a longer period of time.