Bad Credit
Loans are loan extended to those with bad credit history or those with low credit
ratings.Credit history or credit report is, in many countries, a record of an
individual's or company's past borrowing and repaying, including information
about late payments and bankruptcy. The term "credit reputation" can
either be used synonymous to credit history or to credit score. When a customer
fills out an application for credit from a bank, store or credit card company,
their information is forwarded to a credit bureau, along with constant updates
on the status of their credit accounts, address or any other changes made since
the last time they applied for any credit. This information is used by lenders
such as credit card companies to determine an individual's or entity's credit
worthiness; that is, determining an individual's or entity's means and willingness
to repay an indebtedness. This helps determine whether to extend credit, and
on what terms. With the adoption of risk-based pricing on almost all lending
in the financial services industry, this report has become even more important
since it is usually the sole element used to choose the annual percentage rate
(APR).
International Issues
Credit history is typically local to one country. Even within the same credit
card network information is not shared for different countries. For example,
a person who has been using Visa credit cards issued by banks in China or Canada
for many years who moves to the United States and immediately applies for a
Visa will not be approved because of lack of credit history. An immigrant must
establish a credit history from scratch in the new country, which can take years.
New immigrants are forced to seek loans from irregular channels, which can create
social problems. Adverse credit history, also called sub-prime credit history,
non-status credit history, impaired credit history, poor credit history, and
bad credit history, is a negative credit rating. A negative credit rating is
often considered undesirable to lenders and other extenders of credit for the
purposes of loaning money or capital.
Annual Credit
Report
In the USA, federal law mandates that a person may receive their credit report
free of charge. The only official free site is www.AnnualCreditReport.com. Each
of the three bureaus must provide one free report every twelve months. You may
request all three at the same time or spread out your requests over the twelve
month period. This site is maintained by the three credit reporting bureaus,
and the service must be free and available online. It usually takes no more
than 5 minutes to obtain an online printout of your credit history report. You
are required to answer several personal questions for identification purposes
only. The profusion of websites offering credit reports have one thing in common
- they all obtain the information by using the AnnualCreditReport.com information
that you can get for free in five minutes. Your credit score is determined by
each separate credit bureau and may differ with each one. You do have to pay
for a credit "score" from each bureau They may be different with each
bureau. (reference USA Today, November 28, 2007.)
The
Government of Canada offers a free publication called Understanding Your Credit
Report and Credit Score. This publication provides sample credit report and
credit score documents with explanations of the notations and codes that are
used. It also contains general information on how to build or improve credit
history, and how to check for signs that identity theft has occurred. The publication
is available online at http://www.fcac.gc.ca, the site of the Financial Consumer
Agency of Canada. Paper copies can also be ordered at no charge for residents
of Canada.
Adverse Credit
A consumer or business' credit history is regularly tracked by credit rating
agencies. The data reported by these agencies is primarily provided to them
by creditors and includes detailed records of the relationship a person or business
has with the lender. Detailed account information, including payment history,
credit limits, high and low balances, and any aggressive actions taken to recover
overdue debts, are all reported regularly (usually monthly). This information
can be quite detailed and arduous to navigate by a potential lender dealing
with a new applicant. To address this issue, credit scoring was invented.[citation
needed]
All credit
bureaus also offer a supplemental service called credit scoring. Credit scoring
is the process of using a proprietary mathematical algorithm to create a numerical
value that alleges to be a total picture of an applicants creditworthiness.
Scores, frequently based on numbers (ranging from 300-850 for consumers in the
United States), are alleged to statistically analyze a credit history, in comparison
to other debtors, and gauge the magnitude of financial risk. Since lending money
to a person or company is a risk, credit scoring offers a standardized way for
lenders to assess that risk rapidly and "without prejudice."[citation
needed]
Credit scores
allege to assess the likelihood that a borrower will repay a loan or other credit
obligation. The higher the score, the better the credit history and the higher
the probability that the loan will be repaid on time; this theory purports.
When creditors report an excessive number of late payments, or trouble with
collecting payments, a "hit" on the score is suffered. Similarly,
when adverse judgments and collection agency activity are reported, even bigger
"hits" on this score are suffered. Repeated hits can lower the score
and trigger what is called a negative credit rating or adverse credit history.When
a lender requests a credit score, it can cause a small drop in the credit score.Source
: Wikipedia.
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