Credit/Financial > Credit Reports

Why would you like to see your credit report?

Credit report is like your identity in the world of finance. It is like the gate pass that one has to show at the entrance of the money market. If you fail to show your pass, your access will be denied, no doubt.

A good credit report helps you obtain more credit as well, so goes the saying, “wealth attracts wealth”. A person with healthy credit history might not be synonymous with a person of plenty of wealth. As mentioned earlier, credit report is the permit to receive credit; it is the token that shows how reliable you are when money is the matter.

It is quite clear that if you cannot prove yourself to be reliable, creditors won’t be willing to lend you money. Hence you should try hard to attain a better credit and must adopt all precautionary measures to protect it from undue damages because wise men say “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

But how can you do so, if you have no idea about the controlling factors of credit report? What are the variables that have the power over your credit report? Do you know how much fragile your report is? Credit is very much prone to damages…wait, wait, don’t get nervous. You need not be an expert to answer all these questions. Only some basic knowledge is required that can help you manage your credit by your own.

Credit report is a document that includes individual’s financial history of last 10 years with borrowing and repaying habits and bankruptcy details if any. Generally creditors report about your account to the Credit Reporting Agencies. These agencies maintain files for each individual. Once they get account information for a particular person, enter the data in his or her file.

Based on your credit history CRA assigns you a three digit score that is the yardstick of measuring your credibility. Sometimes creditors introduce their own formula for calculating credit score also. But whatever be the system, data used in the process of calculation are compiled from your report only. So if you hold a healthy report with no scars in it, you need not worry about your score, it will definitely be somewhere in the upper range.

Once you manage an appreciable credit score, there comes the question of maintaining it, because credit report is very much prone to injury. It can be damaged if it reflects-

1)      Negative information

2)      Wrong information

As per as negative information is concerned, I must say, consumer is responsible for it somehow, directly or indirectly. If you fall behind with your payments for some reasons or other, your creditors are supposed to report it to the bureaus and your report will start showing it thereafter. Needless to say that your future creditors will not like a delinquent account because it raises a doubt about your consistency with payments.

Generally charged off accounts, accounts under collection, settled at a lower amount, bankruptcy – these statements are considered to be negative and it hamper your score a lot. One should be careful to remove these entries and may go for professional help if required. Process of credit repair requires you to be patient and disciplined.

As per as wrong information in your report is concerned, it can be of two types –

a) CRA can make mistakes while processing your report,

b) Creditors can report wrong information about your account by mistake.

These mistakes are rectified by Credit Bureaus on a request from consumer. Bureaus carry out an investigation and make suitable corrections if any erroneous information is there.

There could be another source of erroneous entries! You may wonder to see lots of default and unpaid accounts in your report suddenly because of an Id theft. If you have lost your personal information in a near past, be alert. Exercise all preventive actions to protect your credit history. File a report with local police and contact Credit Bureaus to place a fraud alert. It will help you erase fraudulent entries from your report in future.

I would like to conclude saying that everybody should check their credit report regularly. It will help to arrest the negative or wrong information at the earliest and can save a lot of time, money and energy as well.

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