Simple Ways to Improve Your Credit Score
|Simple Ways to Improve Your Credit Score
A credit score is a way for lenders and service providers to check an applicant’s credit record. This will help them decide if they’re suitable for a loan or credit. The credit score highlights any potential risks. It can also influence the interest rates and credit limits for the applicant.
There are three main credit reference agencies here in the UK. They each collect information from public records, lenders, and other service providers to create credit scores for people. This score indicates how likely you are to repay a loan or credit. This is based on your past history of managing your finances and repaying credit. A lender is more likely to accept your credit application if you have a higher credit score.
Lenders and other service providers use the credit score from the reference agency alongside other information they have about the applicant to make their decision.
What can I do to improve my credit score?
Since a good credit score is useful to have, lots of people are looking for ways to improve their credit score. There are several things that you can do to achieve this:
- Always pay all your bills on time. Paying all household bills, utility bills, and credit repayments on time is an important part of keeping your credit score healthy.
- Register to vote if you haven’t registered already. It can boost your credit score to simply be on the electoral register. This is because it helps confirm your identity and your address.
- Manage your accounts well. Take good care of all your accounts by staying below your credit limits and reducing debit balances where possible.
- Limit applications and hard credit searches. When you apply for credit or a loan, a hard credit search is made. Each hard credit check may lower your score, especially if many are done within short period of time. This is because this can make companies think you are in financial trouble when applying for credit.
The difference between hard credit checks and soft credit checks
You might be wondering about services such as Klarna and PayPal – “Does PayPal pay in 3 affect credit score?” The good news is that when using services like this, the providers only do a soft credit score check. Unlike hard credit checks as explored above, soft credit checks do not affect your credit score because the checks are not reported.
Benefits of having a good credit score
Finally, having a good credit score comes with many benefits. It will help you borrow the amount of money you need for purchases that you want to make. It can also give you lower interest rates and lower insurance premiums. Having a healthy credit score can also help you qualify for more products such as other credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Additionally, it can help you if you want to rent a property. A good credit score can even help you get a job as some employers do credit score checks as part of the hiring process.
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