My credit file

Your credit file is a collection of information about you, which is held by credit reference agencies (CRA). It contains information about your financial behaviour and provides lenders a summary of how well you manage your finances. This includes accounts like, mortgages, credit cards, overdrafts, loans mobile phone contracts, and even utilities such as gas, electricity and water.

Data about your account is shared with the credit reference agencies once a month. Lowell collates all the data about your account on the 5th of every month (or the next working day if the 5th falls on a weekend).

This data is then shared with the credit reference agencies within a couple of day of it been collated, and the credit reference agencies normally update your credit file information within a week of receiving this.

If you pay a monthly subscription for your credit file, you will be able to see this information within 48 hours of the credit reference agencies updating your credit file.

If you are using a free service such as Credit Karma, you will see the information the next time your credit report is available after the update.

If you don’t keep up with payments for an account (this could be a bank account, a mobile phone contract or a utility supply), your creditor may tell you that the agreement has been broken and the account will default.

Defaults normally occur when you’ve been missing payments over the course of three to six months, but this can vary depending on the lender’s terms.

Once a default has been registered, it will stay on your credit file for six years from the date of default, regardless of whether you pay off the debt.

Companies use the information in your credit file to decide whether to lend you money. Maintaining your contractual payments across all your financial agreements helps your credit score and also gives you the potential of getting lower interest rates when borrowing money.

If you are account falls into a default status, it’s important that you get in touch with your creditors to arrange an affordable payment plan.

Even though a defaulted account does have a negative effect on your credit file, coming to an arrangement with your creditors and paying off the account will help towards rebuilding your credit file.

If you’re worried that Lowell has added a mistake to your credit file, please get in touch with us and we’ll make sure we get to the bottom of what’s happened.

If the error has been made by another company, please contact one of the credit reference agencies. These are – Experian, Transunion and Equifax.

If your account is defaulted and you paid your debt off without a discount, your credit file will be marked as ‘satisfied.’ If you paid your debt off with a discount, the default will be marked as ‘partially satisfied'.

If the account hasn't defaulted and you clear the debt in full, the status of the account will show as 'settled' on your credit file, which shows that you cleared the balance and closed the account before it defaulted. In all scenarios, the update of your credit file shows future creditors that you cleared your debt.

Updates are sent to the Credit Reference Agencies monthly. If you are paying your account regularly, these updates will be reflected each month when we send our data file to the Credit Reference Agencies.

If your account defaults it will be recorded on your credit file, which could make it difficult to borrow money in the future. But there are things you can do to reduce its negative impact, such as setting up a repayment plan and adding a note to your credit report. For more information, please visit Experian’s website.

We use the information on your credit file to help us understand your situation. We use Experian for most of our searches, who are a trusted credit reference agency. When we review your credit file it will show as a 'soft search', so it will not negatively impact your credit score. Your privacy is important to us and we only ever use your information to help us manage your debt.