They serve primarily as an access footprint so you can see who has checked your Credit Report.Įnquiry searches will be visible to anyone checking your Credit Report, but they tend not to have any negative impact. As such, they have absolutely no influence on your Credit Rating or credit applications. Most searches on your Credit Report will likely be soft searches – either enquiry or audit searches.Īudit searches are visible only to you and the Credit Reference Agency – no other organisations will be able to see these. Does it matter if companies check my Credit Report? This is usually to ascertain the employee’s identity, but also to ensure that their financial position won’t affect their job performance. Many employers, especially those in finance and law related fields, are legally required to check their employees’ Credit Reports. When applying for a new job, you may find that the employer runs a credit check on you before formally extending the job offer. They will also check your Electoral Roll listing to help verify your identity, as well as see how long you resided at your previous address – the longer, the better. As such, lenders and landlords alike tend to avoid applicants with these showing on their Credit Report, especially when the entries are recent. County Court Judgments and insolvencies are often seen as indicators of financial instability. Landlords and letting agents will check the public information on your Credit Report to see whether you’ve had any court action taken against you in the last six years. Comparing insurance providers online can result in many soft searches, as each provider checks your Credit Report to offer quotes. Searches from insurance providers are common, especially if you’ve used an insurance comparison site recently. These soft searches grant access to your public information only, meaning the searcher won’t see your private Credit Report information. Insurance providers, landlords, letting agents, and employers can also access your Credit Report, but they tend to carry out ‘soft searches’, known as either enquiry or audit searches. Lenders will ideally want to see a long-standing presence on the Electoral Roll, as this demonstrates stability, and no court records. Your public information consists of court records, like CCJs and bankruptcies, as well as your Electoral Roll listing.
Lenders will check this repayment information to gauge how reliable a customer you seem. This is usually a record of your credit agreements and each monthly payment, going back six years or so. Your private Credit Report information will consist mainly of your account repayment history, which details your monthly payments and account statuses. These allow the searcher to see your complete Credit Report, including both private and public information. This type of access, also known as a ‘hard search’, is recorded on your Credit Report as a ‘ Credit Application Search’. Usually they will inform applicants of a credit check within the terms and conditions of the agreement. In practice, this means that lenders, utility suppliers, and mobile phone providers will search their customer’s Credit Reports when assessing an application. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) states that your Credit Report can be checked ‘without consent if they have a valid reason’. Who can access my Credit Report?Īny organisation can access your Credit Report, providing they have a lawful basis for doing so and they inform you of their intentions beforehand. You can easily keep an eye on who is accessing your Credit Report by monitoring the information for yourself. Organisations of all sorts will take a gander at your Credit Report – some might even come as a surprise, particularly if you don’t recognise them by name.
Renting a property getting a mortgage and even finding your dream job all often involve your Credit Report being scrutinised. Your Credit Report will be checked at almost every major milestone in your life.