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Credit Scores Explained

What Is A Credit Score?

To put it simply, your credit score is essentially your financial footprint. It looks at your financial history, to help lenders assess how “safe” you are going to be to lend money to. What we mean by “safe”, is how likely it is that you’re going to pay the loan back based on your financial history. It’s not possible to see whether you’re going to be able to make the specific repayments for the entirety of the contract, but your history will give them a good indication of whether or not you’re reliable.

Your credit score is going to be influenced by a number of different factors. Some of these can include:

  • whether you have ever been declared bankrupt
  • if you’ve made late payments on your bills
  • if you’ve ever missed loan payments in the past

The difference between a bad and a good credit rating

As far as your credit score is concerned, if you make your payments regularly and on time, your credit score will be far better than if you don’t.

Credit Score FAq's

How are credit scores graded?

Each of the main credit agencies uses a different grading scale, but as a general rule, the higher the number, the better your chances of being accepted are.

Below are an example of how the three main CRA’s grade their credit scores.

Experian Credit Scores

Excellent

Very Good

Good

Poor

Very Poor

961 - 999

881 - 960

721 - 880

561 - 720

0 - 560

Equifax Credit Scores

Excellent

Very Good

Good

Poor

Very Poor

811 - 1000

671 - 810

531 - 670

439 - 530

0 - 438

TransUnion Credit Scores

Excellent

Good

Ok

Needs some work

Needs work

628 - 710

604 - 627

566 - 603

551 - 565

0 - 550

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