Thread: Settled account - Credit Reference Agency

checkmyfile.com Unlimited access to our Triple Agency Report, based on data from all three credit reference agencies for just £14.95 per quarter. Keep watch on your data, your finances and guard against identity theft. All for less than £5 per month.

it is true that this company does provide this service, yet the information provided to checkmyfile.com by experian is very limited. experian dont provide account performance info, credit searches etc. see the link below...

https://www.checkmyfile.com/checkout...return=payment

as Experian is probably the most widely used CRA this might not be the most effect route.

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Experian offer a free service for a month, so sign up check your file then cancel within the month or they will charge you £5.99 per month. i did this then changed over to checkmyfile.com they had more info on there. hope this helps?

Originally Posted by Stopthethieves

Hi.

I think you misunderstand, I can't understand why this would be the case and am expecting in the future for someone to chase me for it.

I will start to be time barred from recouping some of the charges if I don't act soon.

Do they provide FULL and indepth data from all three agencies?

I have had 30 odd accounts over last 10 years and yet just 10 appear, of which 5 are actually current... I thought Experian were supposed to be the biggest?

Regards and many thanks

they drop off after 6 years

Originally Posted by JamesJ

If a lot of your accounts were opened before 2001 the lenders involved probably can't share your data (assuming the accounts weren't defaulted) because they didn't obtain your consent to share full data, just default data.

James

Thats very interesting James, why is that?

Was there some signficant change in legislation at that time then?

Glenn

Indeed. let us know where your source is?

Regards

Norman Lamb:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He makes a good point. There is a big problem with the transfer of credit. Sometimes it can work in the consumer's interest, if they can get a genuinely lower rate of interest and use the system. However, there are real dangers involved. I am not suggesting that the new clause will be a panacea to resolve all the problems of irresponsible lending in the credit industry.

Further to the hon. Gentleman's point, the Treasury Committee noted that people often transfer their credit card balance having received a commitment of a nil rate of interest for perhaps a year. However, they are often not told that new purchases on the card will be charged at the full rate of interest, or that when they pay off some of the balance, it will be taken off the balance transfer, not the new purchases. They therefore find that they are paying interest when they did not expect to. So there are many problems, and they all come down to the practice of responsible lending. We still have a way to go to get the industry fully to understand the importance of that concept.

I am seeking to address one specific historic problem, which is that, in the view of the industry and the Information Commissioner, there cannot be a full sharing of data. The commissioner has advised the industry that it would be a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 to share data without consent. Incidentally, the problem has got much worse because, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) pointed out, there has been a revolution involving people shopping around. In the old days, all our needs were met by one institution—a bank or whatever. Now, people shop around for the best value product, so the need to address the problem of data sharing has grown considerably.

The Information Commissioner has said that, under the old agreements in which there is no provision for data sharing, a lender would need the customer's consent to share such information. The only solution available at the moment, therefore, is for the lender to go to the customer and ask for their consent. Members will appreciate, having sent out political mailings to people, that the response rate to such requests would be tiny. The industry reckons that it would be less than 1 per cent. We cannot resolve the problem simply by seeking consent under the existing rules. New clause 1 seeks to address that.

Mark Lazarowicz (MP for Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op):

I have sympathy with the objectives of the new clause and with the need to promote greater data sharing on an historical basis. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that we need to be careful about forcing consent, as it were, on members of the public? The Data Protection Act is there for a reason, after all. The new clause would give fairly wide powers to credit reference agencies and other organisations to extract consent from individuals. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should think about the implications of what could be quite a serious breach of data protection principles.

full debate on this here

or here

Very interesting read..

Regards

taken from HBOS website
HBOS Corporate Responsibility Report 2004

Data sharing

We apply the same high standard of transparency to products where pricing is risk-based as we do to the rest of our range - all customers will be informed which rate they qualify for before their card is issued.

Recent cases of over-indebtedness involving individuals borrowing on multiple credit cards have highlighted the need for banks to share more information on customers' credit commitments.
HBOS shares information about all our products with the three main credit reference agencies in the UK and has done since 1998. This means that other banks can find out what commitments their potential customers have with Halifax and Bank of Scotland.

In our submission to the Treasury Select Committee in September 2004 we wrote: "We fully support any action that removes the barriers to full data sharing by card issuers - we are lobbying other APACS members and would like the industry to work with the Information Commissioner."

Following the Treasury Select Committee's inquiry other issuers are following suit and have agreed to share all data on cards and loans where legally possible.
Under the 1998 Data Protection Act, customer consent is required to share information on accounts that are up to date with payments ("positive data"). This is important, as even if a customer is making payments on time, they may not be in a position to borrow more. We have asked for customer consent on our application forms for many years2, whereas other issuers have not.

Legislative change is needed to allow data to be shared on around 9 million credit card accounts. The issue of historical data is even more significant for current accounts, especially for the big four, where consent to share on tens of millions of accounts is not available. We are working with the relevant industry bodies who are in discussions with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Constitutional Affairs on this matter.

Despite an existing code of practice which forbids the use of data for predatory marketing, some issuers have raised concerns about this issue if data sharing is increased. HBOS believes that such concerns must be put second to the interests of consumers. This is for our benefit too; we want to be able to judge accurately the risk of an applicant defaulting on payment.