Just because they may have fallen off of a Credit Report doesn’t necessarily mean the debt can be ignored – it simply won’t be visible when performing a credit check.
It’s true that defaults and CCJs are removed from Credit Reports once six years pass from date of issue but often the debt itself still exists. Some assume that because most negative information no longer appears on a Credit Report after six years that it will become statute barred and the debt will be written off. Some lenders will deactivate an account for being dormant too long, and there is the heightened possibility of falling victim to fraud if you don’t use or check the card regularly enough. Simply using a credit card for basic purchases and clearing the balance each month will allow you to paint a picture of being able to manage credit facilities, and ensure that the information stays front and centre when it comes to applying for larger things such as mortgage.īe careful about keeping old, unused credit accounts open. Maintaining a strong Credit Rating over a long period of time isn’t about ‘debt’. Much like a fitness regime, you have to maintain it over a long period of time or risk undoing all your good work. There’s more to a good Credit Rating than taking out finance for a short time, closing the account and assuming that the ‘good’ marker will stay with you forever. The difference between open & closed credit accounts If you’re looking to have an old Financial Association removed, check our guide.
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This also means you’ll be subject to the same limitations when you view your own information, making it unlikely that you’ll be able to see accounts that have been closed for a long time.įinancial Associations are treated slightly differently and remain on your Credit Report until all joint accounts between you and the associate are closed and a manual request is made at the Credit Reference Agencies to remove the associate from your file. The Data Protection Act prevents companies from keeping data longer than they need it, which means repayment history will be held for six years once an account has been closed or settled, but address and contact information for longer if they deem it necessary.įor this reason, lenders can (for the most part) only use the past six years of your payment history when looking at your Credit Report to assess whether you are a good or bad credit risk. Under the Data Protection Act, your information is only stored by Credit Reference Agencies for six years once it’s stopped being reported by lenders. Because of the way data is updated, there are no ‘old versions’ of your Credit Report being stored anywhere - it’s not as simple as calling up and asking for a copy of your Credit Report from August 1993. But your Credit Report is based on information that is constantly getting updated, in order to best reflect your current financial situation. If you’ve seen your Credit Report already, you’ll be aware of the amount of detail that is held about you and your finances over the past six years.
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To see data from all four Credit Reference Agencies, you can try checkmyfile free for 30 days, then for just £14.99 a month afterwards which you can cancel online, by email or by phone. That said, the amount of information your Credit Report contains is still considerable. For that particular purpose, your Credit Report might not have been that useful as the information doesn’t go back further than six years, so you simply won't see records of credit agreements that ended before that. The infamous PPI ‘claims deadline’ (which was set for 29 August 2019) sent a large number of people hunting for old account information with a view to make a claim on insurance that may have been mis-sold on a loan. But if you’re looking for information that’s six years old or more, it’s probably not be the best place to start. For your recent payment history information, your Credit Report has everything you need that’s why it’s given so much importance by lenders whenever you apply for credit.