Irish Credit Rating

samhail

Anyone have any experience with these ?
(i know its not banking related exactly but by messing up loans you can get it affected - please move if in the wrong forum)

I have had a loan out for the past 3 years, went to australia, and missed a few payments. getting denied loans for ages.
I went to the ICB for my credit rating report, expecting to see a list of all my loans ive had (just that one) and the amount of times that i bounced a direct debit and when i didnt. as it shows on their site (http://www.icb.ie/ - sample report)

I got two different reports and it did not show any of my loans. when i called the ICB guys i was told that since i had a few payments bounce it was probably better not to enquire about it, in case the fact that i have bad credit history was recorded.

I left it.

My sister just got her report today and it shows the exact same lack of detail. she has had a loan and it does not show any details atall of that loan.

IsThatSo?

Sure the report was for the correct name and address? As in your name of course, but there could be a few of "your name" in the country so gotta double check the address info. Use the address that you had when you got that loan that you missed payments on

Seriously, you could have ended up with someone elses report.

samhail

thats why i requested a 2nd copy, and called up when they matched. it was the correct details. what got me was cos of my sisters report that she got today

Show_me_Safety

i tried to order one just there and i couldnt fit in my whole address in any of the lines (it is a mouthful!),
since they search using your address i would say that it needs to be an exact match to what you have on statements and loan applications etc.

Kila

When you get a credit report from the ICB, it doesn't give you a blow by blow account of your financial history. All it gives you is information on the last few institutions to have asked for your credit rating, and tells you what credit rating was reported back to them. From this, you'll have to glean how your credit rating is in general.

IsThatSo?

Should the person on the report not be able to see the exact same information as a bank applying for the credit report could?

I am assuming here of course that what the bank gets is more detailed, else how can they base a lending decision on it That would probably be a breach in data protection or something along those lines.........................

Kila

I don't believe so, but I'm open to being corrected.

The ICB Website wrote:

Your credit report includes:
* your name, date of birth, address(es) used by you in relation to financial transactions
* the names of lenders and account numbers of loans you currently hold, or that were active within the last five years;
* repayments made or missed for each month on each loan;
* the failure to clear off any loan;
* loans that were settled for less than you owed; and
* legal actions your lender took against you

So, if I understand correctly, if you've been good and paid your loans on time, haven't had legal action taken against you, etc., then pretty much all that will show up on your report will be your name and address details, details of any bank that you held a loan with in the last 5 years, and the listing of the credit rating number that was given to the last few institutions who asked about you. So it's quite possible that your report would be rather bare. I got a copy of mine recently, and there was very little on it. Just a list of the last 3 banks that checked my rating, when they checked it, and what rating they were given. I've never missed loan payments or anything like that, so there was nothing to display. If you have missed loan payments, but your financial institution didn't report them to the ICB, then they won't show on your record. If they are on your record, they have to disclose that to you on your report.

As for the loan not displaying, I'm not sure. the website says that "Most lenders in Ireland send information about borrowers and their repayments to a central agency, the Irish Credit Bureau (ICB)." This would seem to imply that it's not mandatory to send this information, and perhaps in some cases, it's more trouble than it's worth to them to send on the information to the credit bureau. It's also possible that company policies exist to set a standard threshold for reporting to the credit bureau (i.e. miss any more than 5 payments, and you are reported, otherwise you're not reported).

If your loan is not on your credit report, it may be that the lender just didn't send the information on, either because they don't make a habit of doing so, or because you weren't bad enough to warrant it!