Boost your Credit Score

Your credit score is one of the most vital measures of financial wellness. It indicates how well you manage your access to credit facilities — whether you pay on time and in full, are credit-reliant, and should be granted favourable rates and fees. Your credit score is a three-digit numerical representation of this. It’s calculated using your payment history, credit utilisation rate, amount of recent hard enquiries, balances, and whether you have derogatory marks.

To boost your credit score, you should optimise the factors used when calculating your score. Here’s how you can do that with a credit check for free.

Reduce or Increase Your Debt

Whether you should reduce or increase your debt depends on your credit history and overall balance. Your credit utilisation rate – your balance compared to your limit – also plays a role in this decision.

When to Reduce Your Debt

A high credit utilisation rate can lower your credit score, as using more than 30% of your limit shows you’re credit-reliant. You should keep your credit utilisation rate at or below 30%.

You should also reduce your debt if you’re struggling to make payments on time or have accounts in arrears (have missed payments). Both indicate that you can’t be trusted with credit and will drop your score by a large margin.

Finally, if you’re over-indebted (can’t afford to make repayments or meet living expenses because of your debt), consider debt review. This is a legal process that cuts your repayments, reduces your interest rates, and protects you from creditors.

When to Increase Your Debt

If you’re struggling to acquire credit because you don’t have a credit history, you should use a credit facility responsibly to build your credit score.

Credit histories account for the diversity of your credit portfolio (different sorts of credit, such as credit cards and loans), length of your credit history (a history of managing credit well boosts your score), and positive payment history (whether you pay on time and in full).

You’ll struggle to be eligible for credit if you don’t meet at least one of these criteria. If you don’t have a credit history, consider the surprising connection between credit scores and short-term insurance. Insure an asset and pay your insurance on time. After a while, your score will have gone up, and you’ll have a much easier time qualifying for credit.

Clean Up Your Credit History

To clean up your credit report, you should dispute negative items, check for fraud, and minimise your amount of hard inquiries.

If you have inaccurate items on your credit report, you should dispute them with the bureaus. These could include irrelevant debt review or administration order flags and falsely reported late or missed payments.

You should also regularly check for fraud. A scammer could use your information to open a fraudulent account in your name, then charge your accounts and not pay them off, severely damaging your credit score.

Lastly, you should minimise the amount of hard inquiries against your name. Frequent credit applications show that you’re desperate for credit, which makes lenders nervous about lending you money.

Boost your credit score with Credit Boost, your partner in financial wellness

How Can You Check Your Credit Score?

Credit Boost offers online credit checks for free that won’t impact your score. Since it’s a self-inquiry it won’t show up on your credit history.

Your free, full report will list:

  • Derogatory marks
  • Balances
  • Your hard inquiry history
  • Your payment history

Credit Boost’s experts can help you boost your credit score, helping you to reach financial freedom. To learn more, contact us today.