Understanding credit scores

When it comes to credit scores, there’s no one answer. This is because banks and lenders report your data to different credit reference agencies, and each credit reference agency will score you in a different way.

Here are a few things to know about your credit score:

• Your score will vary with credit reference agency (CRA)- This is because CRAs have access to different financial data (i.e company A may share their data with Experian and not Equifax our data provider) and use their own unique scoring systems. 

• The same lender can score you differently for applying for different products- For example, you could receive one score for a credit card application and a different score for a mortgage.

• The higher the score, the more likely you are to be offered credit- You could be eligible for better interest rates and better deals when borrowing money or taking out a mortgage.

• ClearScore shows you your Equifax credit score- We get your credit score and report data from Equifax, our partner credit reference agency. Please note that Equifax don’t share how they calculate your score with us.

• Your credit score is categorised into bands- We get your score from Equifax, and their score ranges from 0-700. Depending on how your score is, it will fall into one of following bands: