This website is dedicated to answering the question of How To Improve Credit Rating and everything that comes with it. This site will cover what hurts your credit rating and also how you can improve it with simple tips and tricks you can start right away. We’ll give you the points and then go into more detail for each one. Let’s jump in!
1. Register to vote & get on the electoral role
If you’re not on the electoral role then this is probably the main element hurting your credit rating! We’d advise registering immediately and you can do this anytime by visiting the About My Vote website. It’s a major answer to the how to improve credit rating question!
2. Space out your applications
A really easy way to hurt your credit rating score is to make lots of applications in a short space of time as they leave notes on your file. Try your best to space out applications and this includes things such as credit cards, car insurance, mobile phone contracts and anything like that. This is a great tip on how to improve credit ratings!
3. Repairing past credit problems and building a good credit history
If you’ve no credit history then it’s very difficult for lenders to know how reliable you are so this means more risk to them and you’ll probably get rejected. So, if you’ve either got a bad credit history or none at all, you’ll need to build a good one up.
Building a good credit history can be done in a variety of different ways but it’s best to start small and to build this up slowly. Any small amount of credit (credit card, mobile phone contract) and never missing a repayment is the best.
How To Improve Credit Rating Top Tip – Apply for an overdraft and using this as a safety net is a great way to ensure you don’t miss repayments and also adds to your credit rating. Make the repayments Direct Debit when possible!
4. Never be late on your payments!
Missing repayments on the credit you receive will hurt your credit rating for many years to come and the last 12 months are the most important. Again, always make payments via Direct Debit when possible and also try and get an overdraft from your bank – it’s better to be overdrawn than to have a bad rating on your credit history!
5. Joint finances can hurt
If you’re financially linked to another person (be it joint bill on a flat share etc) and they have bad credit than this affects your credit score too! If this is the case then all parties involved are technically co-scored and you could be dragged down. Always keep financially separate where possible. If you have experienced problems due to this ensure once the financial link is broken to write to the credit reference agencies and request a note of disassociation and this should stop their credit rating affecting yours in the future.
6. Quotation search, not credit search!
Always request a ‘quotation search’ and not a ‘credit search’ when possible as a quotation search doesn’t leave a mark on your credit rating – be it good or bad. Unfortunately the majority of lenders haven’t adopted this practice yet but it’s always worth asking.
7. Don’t try if you think you’ll get rejected!
If you think you’re going to get rejected for credit for whatever reason then it’s best not to bother! Getting rejected will more than likely leave a bad mark on your credit history. Many people apply, get rejected, apply somewhere else, get rejected – it’s a downward spiral and does a lot more harm than good.
Thanks for reading our how to improve credit rating page, there will be more top tips, tricks and articles coming soon on how to improve your credit rating. Thank you.