subject: How Do I Find Out My Credit Score And do They Differ From Companies to Companies? [print this page] There are many different reasons why you might want to find out your credit score but usually the main reason is that you are planning on seeking a mortgage or some other type of borrowing.
Another good reason is to see if your score is high enough to lower your interest rate with your lender.
However, The thing that most people do not realize is that there is no one particular credit score.
There are, in fact, different types of credit score that depend on who you ask.
Most lenders have their own "in house" scoring system which will reflect their individual lending criteria and will be a closely guarded secret.
The second type of score is the one given by the credit reporting agencies. The most important of these agencies are the big 3: Experian, Trans Union and Equifax.
The credit scores these 3 companies give are constantly changing, and this is down to each of your payments falling due and either being paid on time, being paid late or missed.
Each of these factors, for example, will cause your score to fluctuate.
Until very recently each of the big 3 would also have different weightings for each of their criteria, which just served to make a complicated situation even worst.
However, to serve everyone better they have gotten together and developed a system called VantageScore (sometimes misspelled as Vantage Score) which means that they can now give a score which is identical across all 3 companies.
To get hold of this score the best thing to do is to request a copy of your credit report.
When you do it is best to wait if you have a payment just about to fall due. This way you will see the most up to date credit score for you.
How Do I Find Out My Credit Score And do They Differ From Companies to Companies?
