How To Use A Credit Score Website To Help Your Credit

Keeping close tabs on your credit score is so important. All lenders will use one of the credit score providers to help choose whether you can take out credit/ a loan and it can impact how much interest you pay. So your financial future can be affected by your score, especially if you want to take out a large loan like a mortgage. A credit score website will help show you your score, but also show you where you may be losing points.

I have used ClearScore for quite a while, and I started using Credit Karma in the last year. ClearScore pulls from Experian, and Credit Karma pulls from TransUnion. So it means I can see two of three different credit providers.

You should check out your score every month when it updates and see if there are any recommendations. It’s a complete money myth that checking your score too often can decrease it.

Here are some ways a credit score website can help increase your score.

You can see where your financial gaps are

Credit score websites are great at being able to tell you what you’re doing right, but also where your gaps are. Insights within a credit score website are personalised to you and your score. So you can use this advice to make some changes and hopefully help your credit score increase.

A financial gap may be about your credit utilisation which is the percentage you use of your credit limit. For example, if you have a limit of £2,000 and you’ve used £1,000 of that, your credit utilisation is 50%. If you’ve used £500 of that, your credit utilisation will be just 25%. A lower percentage will be seen positively by lenders and can increase your score. Ideally you want to keep it below 30%. Now this may not mean reducing spending if this isn’t an option. But you could look at increasing your credit limit even though you won’t use it so your utilisation goes down.

A credit score website can show any missed payments

In an ideal world you’d want all green dots to show you’ve had no missing payments. But sometimes things happen that are unavoidable.

Through a credit score website you can see if lenders think you have missed any payments and check they’re correct. If you spot anything that’s not correct you can reach out to the company to see if they can change it. For example if it shows you missed a payment on your mortgage but this isn’t right you can speak to your lender. Or if it shows you missed a payment to a utility provider you can reach out to them.

It’s not always a quick process to sort out a missed payment showing, but getting it sorted will help you in the long run.

Show you any financial connections

Anyone you may have had a joint account with, or done any credit with will show as a financial connection. Being connected means if the other person has great credit it can help yours. But if they have bad credit it can negatively affect you.

A credit score website will show any financial connections you have. So if you find someone who you don’t have any account with any longer you can request that they’re removed. Try to remove any financial connections that are no longer active/ current.

A credit score website will show your electoral role address

You may be surprised at how important your electoral role address is, but it really is. When you live somewhere you sign up to electoral role in order to be able to vote. But this address then shows as where you officially live. So every time you move you need to update this. If you go to get out credit, a phone contract or anything and the address you give doesn’t match your electoral role you’ll be declined, and it can affect your score.

I had a phone contract and a new bank account declined a few years back because even though I had changed my electoral address the credit agencies hadn’t updated it from the council. So as far as credit providers were concerned I didn’t live where I was saying I lived. I had a six month long battle of long painful phone calls and a drop in my credit score for declined credit before I got it fixed. A little while after moving check with your credit score website to make sure it shows your correct address.

Be able to report anything that doesn’t look right

If something doesn’t look right or is missing from your report you can look at getting it fixed. It may be contacting your bank or lender, or submitting a dispute with the credit score company. By keeping close taps on your credit score you’ll spot any issues straight away.

Your credit report will show any credit that has been applied or taken out in your name. So it’s a good way to make sure everything is legit and no fraudster has used your name to take out credit. If you spot any application you don’t recognise you can reach out to the provider for more information.

Do you use a credit score website?

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