FAQ

Credit reference agencies (CRAs) collect and hold information, about a person’s credit history. Information is shared with CRAs from different sources such as:

• Finance companies like banks, building societies, and insurers.
• Other bodies like local authorities and courts.

There are three main CRAs; TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. They collect and store information to produce credit reports on people in the UK.

Credit reports can then be used for various purposes such as responsible lending, anti-money laundering and fraud prevention.

A credit report is a factual record of your personal credit history, made up of information from different sources like banks, building societies, local authorities, and courts.

If you are over 18 years old and have a bank account or taken out a loan, credit card or mobile phone contract, then you will probably have a credit report.

Credit reports are used for many reasons such as responsible lending, anti-money laundering and fraud prevention.

It is important to check your credit report regularly to keep an eye on your financial health.

Your Credit Health Centre credit report can show any of the following pieces of information:

• Financial account information for the last 6 years, showing both open and closed accounts


• If you are registered on the Electoral Register for your current address


• Financial connections you have or have had to any address or other names you have been known by – this also includes names of other people you have or had a financial connection with, such as a joint mortgage


• Any Legal court details concerning settlements of money which have been registered against you, such as any judgments, insolvencies, or bankruptcies


• Details of searches made against your credit report over the past 2 years.
  Searches are footprints left by organisations who have requested to see a copy of your credit report from a Credit Reference Agency
  Please see separate FAQ question 8 for further details about searches


• Cifas is the UK’s fraud prevention service. If you have taken out Protective Registration with Cifas, or you have been registered as a victim of fraud, a Cifas marker will appear on your credit report. Rest assured, this will not affect your credit score
  Please see separate FAQ question 13 for further details about fraud prevention


• Any Notices of Correction (NOC) statements you have added to your credit report to explain information on your report
  Please see separate FAQ question 6 for further details about NOCs


• Any Notice of Dispute markers you have raised, where you are querying the accuracy of specific information on your credit report with TransUnion
  Please see separate FAQ question 7 for further details about disputes

Many factors can affect your credit score, here are the ones which could have the biggest impact, whether that is negative or positive:

Financial account information history

• If your repayments are on time and if you are meeting the minimum repayment requirements
• How much of your available credit limits you are using and if you appear overly reliant on credit facilities
• The length of time you have had a well-managed financial account
• If you have one or more financial accounts in default

Being on the Electoral Register

Being on the Electoral Register is an easy way to show you have a stable address history, and you can be contacted for any money owed. If you’re not already on the Electoral Register, you can apply here.

People you are financially connected with

Whilst people you are financially connected with won’t have an impact on your credit score, they can have an influence on your ability to obtain credit if their connection to you could have a negative impact on your ability to make repayments. For example, they are financially unreliable.

Make sure you regularly check your credit report to ensure your financial connections are still relevant. If they are not, you can remove them by raising a dispute on your credit report. This process is referred to as disassociation and will prevent them from having an influence on any credit applications you make in the future.

Rest assured, just living with someone does not create a financial connection. You need to have a joint loan, mortgage, or bank account to create a financial link.

Judgments, bankruptcies, and insolvencies

This information on your credit report can signal that you have not been able to repay your previous debts and so could be higher risk to lend to in the future. This information can lower your credit score.

If you do receive a Judgment, you can get it removed from your credit report if you repay the full amount owed within 1 month of the date of Judgment.

Your credit report refreshes every 28 days in Credit Health Centre and will show any new or updated information that TransUnion has received about you.

It will also refresh when:

• You log in after receiving an alert to a significant change
• A change is made to your credit report following a dispute you have raised.

New information is received every 4-6 weeks from different sources such as local authorities, courts, banks and building societies, credit card providers, and utilities and telecoms companies.

A Notice of Correction (NOC) is a short statement you can add to your credit report for the attention of anyone who performs a search against you.

It is used to explain the circumstances behind information which is accurate. Reasons for adding a NOC can include explaining why you missed payments on an account or why you may not have a current Electoral Register record on your report. If you are looking to correct any inaccuracies on your credit report, please see the Notice of Dispute (NOD) FAQ question 7.

A NOC is free to add to your credit report and won’t impact your credit score. Please bear in mind however that it may mean that any credit applications you do make may take slightly longer to process as the NOC will need to be read as part of the application review process by the lender.

A NOC statement must abide by the following rules:

• Be no more than 200 words long
• It must be relevant and accurate
• It must not be trivial, rude, or libellous
• It must not blame anyone
• It cannot name any other person or company

To add a NOC to your credit report please submit your chosen wording here.

Or alternatively, you can write to TransUnion at:

TransUnion Consumer Services Team
PO BOX 647
Unit 4
HULL
HU9 9QZ

Please note that if you add a NOC to your TransUnion credit report, you will also need to contact the other UK Credit Reference Agencies - Experian and Equifax - separately to also add your NOC to the versions of your credit report they hold on you.

A Notice of Dispute (NOD) also referred to as ‘a dispute’ is raised against information within your credit report when you have notified TransUnion that it is incorrect. It means that the information is under investigation.

Disputes are free to raise, you can raise a dispute by navigating to the relevant information you would like TransUnion to investigate within your credit report and select the ‘Something not right’ button. A pop-up message will appear with further information to help you decide if raising a dispute is appropriate. If you would like to continue to dispute the information in your credit report, please select the ‘Yes’ option, and the option to ‘Raise a dispute’ will then appear against all information within your credit report that you can raise a dispute on. If you can’t see the option to raise a dispute, please contact us here.

If TransUnion has asked you to send further documentation to support your dispute, or to get more information on a dispute outcome, please contact our data disputes team quoting the dispute reference number here.

You can find information on a dispute outcome and monitor the status of any disputes you’ve raised in the ‘Dispute Status’ tab in your Credit Health Centre account.

A search is a footprint left behind by anyone who has requested to see a copy of your credit report from a UK Credit Reference Agency (CRA); you will see searches made against your TransUnion credit report through this service.

A search on your credit report will confirm:

• Which organisation performed the search
• What personal information was used to search you
• When the search was made
• Why the search was done

There are many reasons why a search can be done on your credit file, for example:

• to assess your creditworthiness or eligibility when you are applying for a new financial product (e.g., a credit card, mortgage, or loan)
• to complete identify or anti-fraud checks

A search is completed by an organisation with your permission (for example, when you apply for a credit card, a lender will complete a credit search on you). They will remain on your credit report for 2 years.

Searches are not permanent and will be removed from your credit report automatically after 2 years has passed. Whilst they do not impact your TransUnion credit score, you may find that too many credit application searches in a short space of time can impact your ability to get credit.

If you see a search on your credit report that you don’t recognise, it may be from an organisation that is part of a wider business group or umbrella organisation. For example, if you applied for an ’Argos’ store card, your search history would show a search by ’Home Retail Group’ as this is the company who would be supplying the credit.

TransUnion are not made aware of the outcome following a search or hold any further details than what is visible on your credit report. Therefore, if you’d like to know more you will need to contact the organisation who performed the search directly. If however you believe the information is inaccurate, please raise a dispute and TransUnion will investigate on your behalf.

Please see separate FAQ question 7 for further details about disputes

Different types of information stay on your credit report for different lengths of time as follows:

• Financial account information (e.g., credit cards, mortgages, loans): Open accounts that are not in default will show up to 6 years of financial history until settled and closed, financial history older than 6 years will automatically disappear from your credit report. An account in default will show for 6 years from the date it defaulted, after which it will no longer appear on your credit report


• Electoral Register history will be visible to organisations performing a search against your credit report indefinitely as this information is used to help identify who you are. However, your TransUnion credit report will only show the most recent unbroken stretch of Electoral Register history from when it was last updated (e.g., you moved address or changed your name at your registered address)


• All previous addresses and previous names you have been connected to financially will stay on your credit report for as long as is necessary and relevant, as this information forms an important part of identifying who you are


• The names of any people you are financially connected to will show on your credit report until you request to be disassociated from them. This can be done by raising a dispute against their name on your credit report when you no longer have any join finances such as a mortgage


• Judgments, bankruptcies, and insolvencies show on your credit report for 6 years from the court order date, with some exceptions:
  • Judgments that are paid off within 1 month from the date the order was issued will be ‘set aside’ and no longer appear on your credit report
  • a Bankruptcy Restriction Order (BRO) or a Bankruptcy Restriction Undertaking (BRU) can stay on your credit report for up to 15 years
  • An Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) can stay on your credit report for up to 15 years if you do not meet the IVA criteria


• Searches show on your credit report for 2 years


• A Cifas marker typically stays on your credit report for as long as is necessary to protect and prevent fraud. If you have paid for protective registration to be applied to your credit report, then this will be in place for 2 years


• A Notice of Correction statement will remain on your credit report for as long as the data item it refers to appears on your report, or until you request for it to be removed


• A Notice of Dispute marker will remain on your credit report for up to 28 days whilst the queried information is investigated via TransUnion’s dispute process

TransUnion adheres to data retention rules in accordance with current UK data protection regulation and is regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Each Credit Reference Agency (CRA) in the UK has its own way of calculating a credit score using the information they hold on you in your credit report. Your credit score is to help you understand how an organisation may view your credit history when you make a credit application with them. While the credit scores of each UK CRA are not directly comparable, typically the higher your score, the more likely you would be accepted for better credit deals with a lender.

Like CRAs, lenders will produce their own score based on their lending criteria which they will use to make their lending decisions.

If you are worried that you have been a victim of fraud and can see information on your credit report you are concerned about, we would encourage you to:

• Raise a dispute against the information you are concerned about in your credit report. TransUnion’s team of data specialists will raise your concerns with the organisations who provided this information to them to make them aware that the data is possibly fraudulent. The organisation will then investigate and if they find evidence that fraud has occurred, they will remove the data they have shared with TransUnion. Alternatively, if you prefer, you can contact the organisations directly with your concerns
  Please refer to FAQ question 8 for more details on how to raise a dispute


• Add a password for lenders to request when processing an application for credit. a Notice of Correction
  Please refer to FAQ question 7 for more details about how to add a Notice of Correction


• You may choose to contact Cifas, the UK’s leading fraud prevention service, here to apply for protective registration. This costs £25 and lasts for 2 years. It is a marker that will notify anyone who searches your credit report to take special precautions to check your identity before offering any credit

In addition to checking how well you’ve managed borrowing money in the past, lenders are also concerned with how capable you are of paying off your current debt against additional borrowing.

They use your income and expenditure (including financial commitments) to measure how affordable your borrowing is for you.

Some lenders might make an affordability assessment as part of their ongoing account management when you apply for a new credit product with them such as a mortgage or credit card.

These checks are put in place as part of a lender’s commitment to responsible lending and to help make sure you can afford repayments. This is to help protect both you and the lender from a debt not being repaid.

The Credit Health Centre affordability rating is calculated by TransUnion. It compares your monthly income as defined by Barclaycard, to your monthly financial commitments, to give an indication of how affordable your current borrowing might be for you.

The higher the percentage of income you need to meet your credit commitments, the lower your affordability rating will be.

Your affordability rating will fall into one of five bandings, depending on the TransUnion calculation. These are:

• Very low
• Low
• Average
• High
• Very high

Your income information will be taken from the bank account that you link to when using the affordability rating service (click here for relevant Privacy Policy). And your credit commitments information will be taken from your TransUnion credit report and will include your fixed term loans, credit cards, mortgage, and overdraft commitments. Your affordability rating will not consider your outgoings that are not related to debt repayment.

Please be aware that if your income changes, your new income will need to have been paid into the linked account by the date TransUnion obtain your bank account data for that month in order for the updated income information to be considered for your affordability rating.

If your income is irregular, your income will be calculating a monthly average over the last 12-month period.

Like TransUnion and Barclaycard, other lenders will their own way of measuring your affordability. This is an education tool, and so a very high affordability rating in the Credit Health Centre won’t necessarily mean you will be approved for a credit application.

A credit application search can give an idea of how well you’ve managed borrowing money in the past. Whereas an affordability assessment gives an idea of how capable you are of paying off your existing debt based on your current income, and any additional borrowing you’re applying for.

In order to provide you with your affordability rating or to update an existing rating, we need to know your current monthly income. TransUnion can view your income by accessing your bank account transaction history (over 12 months).

TransUnion can’t access your bank information without your permission. This means, every time you want to connect your bank account to Credit Health Centre to access your affordability rating, TransUnion will ask you to provide your consent.

To keep your affordability rating up to date, TransUnion will request information from your connected bank account every 28 days, over 90 days from the date you consented. After 90 days have passed, TransUnion will stop requesting new information. Rest assured, they will still be able to display your affordability rating for a further 90 days using the information which was last received from your bank account.

If you do not have a connected bank account, you can request that your affordability data is deleted. This will delete your affordability rating, any bank transactions that have been obtained to calculate your affordability rating, as well as any other calculations made by TransUnion concerning your affordability rating.

Yes, this information will be shared with Barclaycard. Any income data will be used within the affordability assessment process that TransUnion runs for Barclaycard as part of either a new credit application or ongoing account management that determines whether your current credit limit and offers are appropriate based on your current circumstances. The affordability assessment may lead to a credit limit increase or decrease.

You can find more information about how we use your information in our privacy notice.

Unfortunately, this means that you won’t be able to share your income data with TransUnion to get your affordability rating at this time. However, you can still access other parts of the Credit Health Centre service, such as your credit score and credit report.

TransUnion are continuously working on expanding the list of supported banks, so please check back later to see if your bank has been added.

Yes, TransUnion are a trusted Barclaycard partner.

They’re registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 805757) as an Account Information Service Provider, and also registered with the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE).

To stop receiving your affordability rating select the MANAGE LINK button on the Affordability feature, this will take you to your linked accounts. From here you will be able to disconnect any active linked account(s). Once you have disconnected your account(s), then we will stop requesting new information from your bank.

If you have no active accounts and no longer wish to see your affordability rating, you can use the REMOVE ALL DATA button. This will delete all data used in the Affordability feature including your bank transactions and any calculations made by TransUnion.

Please follow the steps in the error message. If you’re having problems, make sure you’re not in a private/incognito web browser and close any private/incognito tabs you have open. If that doesn’t work, you can get in touch with us.

TransUnion is starting to include Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) financial information in credit reports. This is to further help consumers manage their financial health and provide organisations with a clearer image of your borrowing behaviour. If you have used BNPL payment options, and TransUnion is receiving the data from the BNPL organisation you used, the information will show in the ‘Other accounts’ section in Credit Health Centre, as a ‘Deferred Payment’ account type.

BNPL information does not currently have an impact on your TransUnion credit score, but this will change at an appropriate time in the future as BNPL becomes more widely shared with UK credit reference agencies.

Any BNPL information on your report can also be seen by lenders, and they will decide if they use the BNPL information in their decision-making or not.

If you would like to find out more from TransUnion about BNPL on your credit report, please see here.