How can I improve my credit score?

Register to vote

Registering to vote links you to an address, and as such provides a form of security and identification for lenders. As such, it will improved your credit score and will likely improve the time it takes to be approved as well. Without it, additional proof of address and/or identity may be required.

Build your credit history

As a mechanism to judge your reliability when borrowing money, it is important to have a credit score. A lack of or minimal credit score can therefore cause you issues when you come to lease a van. Without a history of borrowing to make a judgement on, your credit score will overall be lower to reflect this uncertainty.

This can often be a problem for younger people or those who are new to the country.

It is good to start building your credit history early by opening a bank account and managing household bills and utilities effectively. Having and paying off a credit card is also a means to prove you can borrow and repay loans effectively, and therefore will also improve your credit score.

Pay debt on time

Having and repaying debt on time is the best way to improve your credit score. Older, timely managed accounts will achieve the best score as they document consistent financial reliability over time.

Credit utilisation

Credit utilisation refers to the proportion of your credit limit currently cashed in. For example, someone with a credit limit of £5000 who currently has a loan for £2500 has a credit utilisation of 50%.

A utilisation percentage of 25% is optimum for success on another high-value finance application like a van lease.

Credit utilisation can be manipulated by taking out extra credit cards without spending on them. This increases your credit limit without changing your borrowed amount and therefore lowers your utilisation percentage. However, to do so could leave you liable to appearing reliant on borrowing and each new account increases your risk of fraud and identity theft.

The best advice is to maintain your credit limit in line with your financial needs, increasing this only when it is in your interest to do so and may be realistically used by you.

It is essential to check your credit score regularly in order to highlight and rectify any errors early. A decline on finance can further negatively impact your score so checking this before you undertake any financial applications will help prevent it from worsening in these circumstances.

If you're looking to improve your credit score, we can help. Thanks to Credit Score Pro, we can offer you a 14-day free trial to their platform, with big monthly savings further down the line. Their platform allows you to monitor and check your credit score.