Your new credit score

Equifax has launched a new generation of credit scores. The new Equifax Score aims to provide a fairer and more transparent credit score for all consumers - and give you more control of it.

What's changing in the Equifax Score?

Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) changes have enabled lenders to be better informed when assessing loan applications.

CCR has allowed Equifax to use additional data, including your repayment history information, to calculate your credit score.

The benefit for you is that, previously, credit scores were calculated using mainly negative credit behaviours, such as defaults and arrears.

With CCR, more positive data, such as paying your debt on time, using reputable credit providers, and avoiding short-term or unsecured loans, can be used to build your credit score.

This additional information will have an impact on your score, positive or negative. Adverse or negative factors will drive down your score, but positive factors can help drive improvements to your score faster.

Factors influencing your score

Understand what’s driving your score up and down

There are many factors that can influence your score, both positively and negatively.

We are making the Contributing Factors available with your service more transparent and easier to understand. Using this information you can see at a glance what is influencing your score, and which factors may be having the biggest impact on how lenders may view your creditworthiness.

Factors that can influence your score positively

• Keeping your loan and bill payments up to date

• Closing credit card accounts you don’t need

• Limiting the number of unsecured credit you have, such as personal loans

• Avoiding small, short term loans including buy now, pay later

• Applying for credit with larger banks and more reputable lenders

Factors that can influence your score negatively

• Late payments of over 60 days

• Late payments of 30 days over several months

• Multiple loans and credit accounts with overdue payments

• Loans and credit accounts in arrears

• Several unsecured personal loans

• Payment defaults

• Regularly using short term loans like buy now, pay later services

• Multiple applications for loans or credit over a short time period

• A short credit history

Start building your credit history

This new generation of credit scores is recalibrated and unrelated to the previous scores from Equifax.  Due to the new information and methods used to calculate your score, comparing it to the old score is no longer appropriate or accurate. Your score history graph will therefore be progressively built with the new Equifax Score.  

With the more effective use of your repayment history in the new Equifax Score, by adopting positive credit behaviours like paying loans and bills on time and minimising short term, unsecured loans, you can build up a strong credit score quicker than ever before.