Improve Your Credit Score
Hints and tips on how to improve your credit score and keep it healthy.

To improve your credit score may not be as difficult as you may think. Before we look at the various ways your credit score can be improved, we will first explain what your credit score is.

In essence your credit score is a record of how you conduct yourself with the financial products you use. This information is held with various credit reference agencies and the financial companies you deal with. The financial companies will then use this information to help them decide to accept or decline an application. By trying to improve your rating you will have a better chance of getting applications accepted.

This is only a part of the decision process as financial companies are looking for new customers that will make them a profit. For example a customer who pays off their credit card in full each month will not be paying any interest to the card company, so may be declined by a company who want to maximize their profits on the interest charges!

What does my credit score look like?

The first step in trying to improve your credit score is to find out exactly what is on your report. As mentioned previously, there are a couple of different agencies with Experian being one of them. You can contact these agencies and, for a small fee, they will send you a report. Some of the companies may even give you a score based on your conduct.

To get a complete picture, obtain your report from all the reference agencies as some may hold different details from others.

What can you do to improve your score?

It is very important to check the information on the report as sometimes mistakes can be made. After all you don’t want to be refused due to an address mix up with someone else’s details!

If you do find an error, write to the financial company in question and the reference agency. It may take some time for the correction to appear on your report so be aware of this before making any new applications.

Another great tip for trying to improve your score is to cancel any credit cards that are not being used and do not have a balance on. This is because it will look like you have too much credit available and may be refused any from a new company.

Being on the voter’s roll is a quick way of getting some improvement on your score too. A great deal of applications are rejected just because the lender couldn’t confirm the client lives at the address via the electoral roll.

Keeping your score healthy

Once you have improved your score there are a few ways to keep in healthy. For example make sure you pay your payments to cards or loans on time even if you are only making the minimum payment. Missing payments or making late payments will not improve your score and you will find it harder to obtain credit or pay higher rates.

Also try to avoid making lots of applications in a small space of time or if you have been getting applications declined. Too many applications without success will again damage your score.

If you keep getting rejected by the major companies, you may look to a credit card that offers a repair scheme. The interest rates on these cards are very high but by spending a small amount of money on them and paying it off each month you can slowly improve your credit score.