Statutory Credit Reports

There are three credit referencing agencies used in the UK. They are Experian, Equifax and Callcredit. You have a statutory right to request a copy of the information they hold on you, for which you are charged £2. All of them offer full reports for around the £15 mark, but these just contain analysis and views on how lenders will interpret the information. There are times when a full report could be useful, but not for me at the moment.

I recently requested the statutory reports from all three agencies and they all showed up within a few days. Although they all contained similar information the Experian report showed that it was the agency lenders were primarily using to do checks with. It was interesting to see just how much information is contained in the report and how often you’ve had checks run against yourself. Did you know that some insurance companies do it when you get a quote?

So why would you want to do this? The main reason is to keep tabs on the information held about you and to check for anything suspicious. If someone has stolen your identity you might find things cropping up on your report that have nothing to do with you. They also give you the opportunity to find and correct mistakes, which is better than trying to deal with problems when a lender does a check on you.

For £6 in total it’s not worth worrying about the money, so I plan to get reports on a yearly or bi-yearly basis.

Hopefully this provides you with a little insight in to this area – I knew little about it until I went through this process.