Lot of effort has been made by consumer advocates to simplify the information on a credit report. Reading a credit report can be difficult and continue confusing at first time. However if you try to go about it systematically and give yourself some time you’ll be able to understand it. The personal copy of the credit report that is provided to the consumer is different from the copy that is given to a business for credit application approval purpose. The copy given to the consumer is meant to be presented in a simplified form with some additional information given which is not provided to the lender many accesses your credit report.
The first section on your credit report will list your personal details such as your name, address social security number, employment etc. This information is easy enough to understand.
The next section will be borrowing summary and will include the information found in the rest of your credit report such as your late payments will past two years, your payment history, your total amount of credit and the amount of credit available to you.
The next section on your credit report will be the section about information collected from public records such as bankruptcy filings, tax liens and any legal judgments obtained against you in a court of law by a creditor.
If you have a mortgage than the next section will have a kind of a chart showing the bank, the type of loan, the limit of the loan and the amount you owe on the loan, when the loan was issued, the length of the loan and other pertinent information. The terms of the loan and the amount of monthly payments, the last of activity and even the last a delinquency date may be mentioned here.
It is important to go over each section of your credit report carefully and individually to make sure that it does not contain any error and it is being reported accurately. Even though a particular section may seem confusing taking time and patience to read it will enable you to quickly make sense of it. Do not try and rushed to the poor credit report or try to read it all at once. Break it down into two different sections to make it easier for yourself.
Your credit report will also contain information about which factors are impacting your credit score negatively.
Although the format of presentation of information differs from each credit bureau, you can easily identify the key information that has the potential of affecting your credit score. There are certain kinds of information that you will need to pay special attention to if you want to make sure that your credit report stays accurate.
Even the most basic and mundane information on a credit report such as your name and address should be checked and kept accurate. The credit bureau seeks to maintain all variations of the name and addresses reported to it at all points of time. It uses various identifiers and such as social security number to make sure that all the information for one particular consumer finds its way on the same credit report. However, in spite of this variations in name can result in mistakes happening and accounts missing from the credit report or accounts that two not belong to you being reported on your credit file. For this reason you must read carefully through all the basic information. The essential information that has the potential of affecting your credit score is as follows.
Name of the Creditors Account
Account Number
Payment Pattern and History
Account Status
Enquiries by Creditors (not for preapproved offers)
If you find any discrepancy in the information listed, such as an account Longley reported as late or an account that does not belong to you, you should file a dispute with the credit bureau. You can call up customer care representative over the phone if you have a recent copy of your credit report. You can cite your credit report number which is mentioned on top and ask for clarification.