What is a credit score in the UK?

The most important thing to understand

Lenders do not use the credit score you can see.

When you check your score with Experian, Equifax or TransUnion, you are seeing a number that agency calculated for you, on a scale it invented. It is a rough indicator of how your file looks. It is not the number a lender sees, because lenders do not receive it.

What a lender receives is your credit report — the underlying data. It then runs that through its own scorecard, combines it with your application details and its own current lending appetite, and reaches a decision.

This is why you can have an "excellent" score at one agency and still be declined. It is also why chasing the number itself is less useful than fixing what is on the report.

Three agencies, three files

The UK has three credit reference agencies: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

Each maintains its own file on you, and they do not hold identical data — not every lender reports to all three. Each also publishes its own consumer-facing score on its own scale, which is why the three numbers you see are usually different and cannot be compared with one another.

If you are preparing for an important application, check all three. A mistake sitting on one file will only be found by looking at that file.

What is on your credit report

• Credit accounts — cards, loans, mortgages, overdrafts, mobile contracts and some utilities, with a month-by-month payment record.
• Electoral roll registration — the address you are registered to vote at.
• Public records — County Court Judgments, bankruptcies, Individual Voluntary Arrangements, Debt Relief Orders.
• Searches — who has looked at your file and when.
• Financial associations — anyone you hold a joint account or joint credit with.
• Address history.

What lenders weight most

Not published as percentages the way FICO publishes its factors, but consistently significant:

Payment history. Whether you have paid on time. Missed payments are typically recorded once you are a full month behind, and remain visible for six years.

How much you owe, relative to your limits. See credit utilization.

Electoral roll registration. A specifically UK factor, and a genuinely material one — it is how lenders confirm your identity and address. Registering to vote is free, takes minutes, and is one of the few quick wins that is real.

Length and stability of history. Long-held accounts and a settled address history help. Frequent moves and very new files do not.

Recent applications. Each full application leaves a hard search visible to other lenders for a period. Several in a short window suggests either shopping around or difficulty getting accepted, and lenders cannot tell which.

Financial associations. If you hold a joint account or joint credit with someone, their credit behaviour can be considered alongside yours. This persists until you formally apply for a notice of disassociation — a separation or divorce does not remove it automatically.

Hard and soft searches

• A hard search is recorded when you apply for credit. Other lenders can see it, and several in a short period can affect decisions.
• A soft search — an eligibility check, or checking your own file — is visible only to you and has no effect.

Use eligibility checkers before applying. UK lenders and comparison sites offer them widely, and they let you avoid collecting hard searches from applications that were never likely to succeed.

How to see your file

You have a legal right of access to the information each agency holds about you, and all three provide free ways to see your report. Several free services also give ongoing access.

Read the report, not just the score. Accounts you do not recognise, a default that should have dropped off, or a CCJ recorded against a previous occupant of your address are all things you can only find by looking — and all things you can dispute.