Improving Your Credit Score

There are various ways to improve your credit score:
 
Lots of credit searcheS in a short space of time can adversely affect your score.
Credit scoring tries to predict your behaviour. If you've no credit history it's more difficult for lenders to do this, so you're more likely to be rejected. Therefore, both for those with poor and no credit histories, you need to build a good one.

By getting any kind of credit, and operating it perfectly (i.e never missing payments, always staying within limit), you can either build up a credit history from scratch, or remedy a tarnished one.

Always try to ensure you achieve at least the minimum repayment plan for your financial products. Even if you're struggling, don't default or miss payments. Doing this once or twice could cause problems that can affect your credit score for many years.

When trying to obtain a quote for a loan, request that the lender does a 'quotation search' and not a 'credit search'as this means the enquiry won't have a negative impact on your credit score.

If you own your own home rather than rent, and are employed rather than self-employed, you are more likely to be accepted.  Being with the same employer, bank and current address for a longer period of time will also help.

If you have a number of unused credit cards cancel most of them as having too much available credit can cause a problem.