so after a couple of weeks of enquiring about and applying for loans, and being rejected by one bank after another, i got a call from yet another credit provider one thursday morning. the content of the call was unsurprising - my application for a loan had been turned down. the reason, however, was. apparently, they turned me down because i had “already made too many enquiries about loans”. when i asked what this meant, the girl on the phone told me that they had looked at my credit record and seen that i’d approached other banks before going to them, and because of that, they weren’t going to consider my application any further.

this was the first i’d heard about the existence of a credit record of this nature, and i realised that this meant i was at a dead end. i couldn’t try and apply somewhere else because the next bank would do the exact same thing - look at my credit record and reject the application. my fury at my complete lack of agency was second only to my bewilderment - how could i not have known about this credit record thing? why was i not warned that such a thing could happen?

later that afternoon i got a call from a loan broker i’d emailed a couple of days earlier. she asked if i was still interested in applying for a loan and i just cracked. i snapped out that yes, i was, but i’d just been informed that i have a credit record that has apparently blackballed me from every single financial institution in australia, so no, i wasn’t really looking to apply right now because it would be a hopeless waste of time. after the words came roaring out of my mouth i apologised immediately. no matter how bad a day fortnight, taking it out on a complete stranger is bad form. the loan broker, however, was lovely. sounding genuinely sympathetic, she explained to me how the credit record thing works.

apparently if you even walk into a bank, and just express interest in a loan; if you so much as give them your name, they can look up your credit file and put a mark on it. of course, if you look on the internet for loans, and apply online - as they encourage you to do! - this automatically puts marks onto your file from every institution you’ve made an application to, even before they assess your application, let alone reject it.

so of course any bank that brings up your file thereafter sees all these marks and assume that you’ve been turned down by all the institutions listed, and so without even looking at anything else - your actual credit history (if you’ve ever defaulted on a loan, or had credit card trouble), salary, or even how much you’re applying for! - they close your file and stamp it with a no.

the worst of it is that they can do this without telling you that they are. and most people don’t even know of the existence of their record until, like me, someone happens to tell them why they’ve been turned down for a loan.

so if you’re curious about what kind of record has been constructed on your behalf, do as the nice broker advised me, and ask for a copy of yours. you can get one sent to you in 10 working days for free, from these people here.

and that’s all i want to say about that.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 10:48am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.