If there is one thing everyone worries about today, it is their credit score. You can find this important detail in your personal credit report. If you have had a hard time accessing credit and cheaper insurance rates, it is highly likely that your poor credit score has caused all this. It is important to get as much information as you can about your credit report and your credit score. This will help you create a plan to improve your credit rating. This article highlights some of the important aspects of a credit report to help you get started. Keep reading.
What is a Credit Report?
A credit report is now a common term, but you will be surprised to learn that most people don’t even know what it entails. Our credit reporting services contain information about the way you handle your credit and debit accounts. It contains crucial financial information such as debt you’ve accumulated, bankruptcy, your place of work and residence, how you pay your home bills, foreclosure or vehicle repossession among other things.
The process of compiling all this information might sound like an impossible task, but in this age of big data, credit reference agencies do it easily. They collect this information from banks, employers, credit card companies, government agencies including the courts among other databases.
The major credit reference bureaus namely Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion easily access all this information and compile into a report. In turn, financial institutions, employers, utility providers and anyone else allowed under the law can access this information. You can order a free report from all the three agencies once a year or pay more for further services such as alerts and updates.
From the report compiled, business owners and financial institutions can derive your financial situation and determine if you are at risk or not. Loan providers who had in the past lost a lot of money rely on these reports to gauge your capacity to repay the facility given. Insurance companies, on the other hand, use this information to determine the interest rate to offer based on your credit score.
It is also possible for lenders to request custom credit reports such as auto or a mortgage credit report which contains only the necessary information. Looking at all this, there is no denying the importance of a credit report on your finances.
