Understanding Your Experian Credit Report

Learn what’s in your report

Your Experian Credit Report contains information that helps credit providers see if you’re a reliable borrower. We’ve set out some information here to help you understand what’s in your report and how to read it.

Personal Information

At the top of your credit report is your personal information such as name, gender, other names, driver’s license, date of birth, employer and known addresses.

Your Experian Credit Score

Your Experian Credit Score shows you how things are tracking at a glance. Your Experian Credit Score is a number between 0 and 1,000. The red boxes under “Your Credit Summary” give an indication of the negative factors that could be impacting your score. Information about defaults and overdue payments can be found further down the report.

Current Consumer Credit Providers

This section provides information about current open accounts such as with credit providers and debt collection agencies that do not currently provide repayment history.

Consumer Credit Enquiries

You will find information here about any applications you’ve made for credit in the last five years as well as the name of the organisation you applied to. This section doesn’t state whether your application for credit was successful, declined or accepted by you. These are purely enquiries / applications made by you.

Consumer Credit Accounts

You will see information about the payments you’ve made in the last two years that have been reported by your credit providers to Experian. It’s worth noting that not all of your credit providers will report your repayment history to us. Green ticks show you’ve made payments for that month on time and a number denotes the missed payments for that month. If you’re more than seven months behind only seven is shown.

Consumer Defaults

Here you can find out more about the defaults mentioned earlier in your Experian Credit Report, including how much you owe / owed when the account defaulted and the status of the default. For example P = Paid or S = Settled.

Consumer Serious Credit Infringements

The information here will show details of any circumstances where any of your credit providers believes:

  • You have committed or attempted fraud in the way you have applied for credit or
  • You have fraudulently evaded meeting your credit obligations or
  • Your actions indicate you don’t intend to comply with your credit obligations and they’ve tried unsuccessfully to contact you about this over six months ago

Commercial Credit History

This section shows the information about applications you have made for credit as well as your past and current credit relationships that are for your business use such as a business credit card or trade credit account.

Public Information

This section of your credit report gives information that is publicly available about your financial situation, including information about whether you’ve been made bankrupt or have had an successful court actions taken against you.

Personal Statements

In certain circumstances you can request Experian to add a short factual statement to your credit report that says for example, a possible compromise of your personal identity information. This will then be visible to any organisation that is allowed to see your credit report.

It’s worth bearing in mind that if you’re concerned about someone stealing your identity, you should consider asking for a temporary ban to be placed on your credit report.

File Access Record

Entries under this section of your Experian Credit Report have no effect on your credit score. This section is for your record only to show you who has accessed your credit report. Accessing your credit report can mean several things such as exchange of information with credit providers you currently have a relationship to check our records match theirs. Accessing your credit report does not necessarily mean an organisation is looking at the report in its entirety. It could simply be an exchange of data between us and them.

Financial Hardship Information

From July 1 2022 ‘financial hardship information’ was introduced to protect consumers’ credit history. A financial hardship arrangement is made between you and your lender to adjust your repayments due to an issue with your ability to repay. During an arrangement, your credit report will show a payment arrangement “flag” alongside that month’s repayment history information. Any financial hardship arrangements you had before 1st July 2022 will not be reported. Visit CreditSmart for more information.

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