Checking credit health

D

DrewChan

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What is the best way to do this? I know various sites offer free reports however this only tells you what accounts you have and if you're late for any payments.

Is there a report that will give me a view of how insitutions will view my "risk"

I'm looking to buy an apartment soon and want to see how good my credits looking
 
I recall someone involved in the credit rating thingy saying every time this is accessed and a report extracted your rating reduces.
Cannot confirm this but a point to investigate.
 
Hemi300c said:
I recall someone involved in the credit rating thingy saying every time this is accessed and a report extracted your rating reduces.
Cannot confirm this but a point to investigate.
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Correct, you get soft and hard impressions on data. If you do a full credit report you will get a notch for inquiry histories. Some lenders look at this as a way of hunting for the best deals. A single inquiry or two will not effect it that badly thou.
 
DrewChan said:
So I'm apparently "good" :D

Scale
Excellent
Very Good
Good
Average
Below Average
Poor
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Thats very subjective, each bureau and credit vetter can have their own bands. What is good for them might be bad for our company, vice versa.
 
http://www.transunion.co.za/home.html - This will give you a comprehensive risk profile. However this has become of little importance after the NCR. There are strict guidelines on lending money and your risk profile will not supersede that. Just make sure your debts are paid/up to date.

Hemi300c said:
I recall someone involved in the credit rating thingy saying every time this is accessed and a report extracted your rating reduces.
Cannot confirm this but a point to investigate.
Click to expand...

The credit rating organisation releases information to all authorized parties, one of which is the number of credit checks in a given period. Financial services companies might see you as a risk client if you shop around too much. So they release this rumor in order to try prevent you from looking around too hard. You will always hear this from bond originators, because they do the hard work and you can circumvent them and go straight to the bank.
 
Ga77a said:
http://www.transunion.co.za/home.html - This will give you a comprehensive risk profile. However this has become of little importance after the NCR. There are strict guidelines on lending money and your risk profile will not supersede that. Just make sure your debts are paid/up to date.



The credit rating organisation releases information to all authorized parties, one of which is the number of credit checks in a given period. Financial services companies might see you as a risk client if you shop around too much. So they release this rumor in order to try prevent you from looking around too hard. You will always hear this from bond originators, because they do the hard work and you can circumvent them and go straight to the bank.
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It is not a rumor part of our credit granting engine takes this into consideration, if we see X amount of inquiries in X period we drop the score and/or decline the credit. That is however how we do things, others are obviously different.
 
semaphore said:
It is not a rumor part of our credit granting engine takes this into consideration, if we see X amount of inquiries in X period we drop the score and/or decline the credit. That is however how we do things, others are obviously different.
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Why is the above in place, I don't get this logic
 
DrewChan said:
Why is the above in place, I don't get this logic
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It all boils down to risk mitigation. If you're had 20 inquiries in the last 7 days, there clearly something suspect about your ability to manage your finances.
 
DrewChan said:
Or you're OCD re: how good you're looking
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So you're arguing the validity of risk analysis and mitigation, which has been backed up my copious amounts of statistics. Um okay. :erm:
 
semaphore said:
So you're arguing the validity of risk analysis and mitigation, which has been backed up my copious amounts of statistics. Um okay. :erm:
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Woah where am I arguing validity? Sensitive much? Merely stated that there are circumstances where a person will be in and out of their profile without there being dodgy behavior happening. Granted it may be the exception.. but the scenario exists. This person would then be unfairly discarded unless controls are in place to manage such exceptions.
 
DrewChan said:
Woah where am I arguing validity? Sensitive much? Merely stated that there are circumstances where a person will be in and out of their profile without there being dodgy behavior happening. Granted it may be the exception.. but the scenario exists. This person would then be unfairly discarded unless controls are in place to manage such exceptions.
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I'm yet to come across a standard person who does 20 inquiries in a weekly period, i mean some of the data only updates once a month, so it would be a futile process to begin with.
 
You're entitled to one free credit bureau report annually if I'm not mistaken, from Transunion I think. You have to sign up though.
 
your own enquiries don't affect your score as far as I know. Last year I was signed up with TransUnion and could access my credit report whenever I wanted. and my score was never affected, and my own enquiries were not recorded against my report.
 
semaphore said:
I'm yet to come across a standard person who does 20 inquiries in a weekly period, i mean some of the data only updates once a month, so it would be a futile process to begin with.
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Just curious about this as most insurance providers also run credit checks now of late. Heaven knows why. I take it this increases your chances of being seen as a high risk customer.
 
Nikita_k said:
your own enquiries don't affect your score as far as I know. Last year I was signed up with TransUnion and could access my credit report whenever I wanted. and my score was never affected, and my own enquiries were not recorded against my report.
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This. I've never seen any of my queries on my report as well.
 
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