The Irish Credit Bureau (ICB) estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 people check their credit reference report every year.
Some check out of curiosity but most do it because they have been turned down for credit, either here or overseas, where having no credit history can be a barrier to borrowing.
So how do you go about checking your credit history and what can you do about it if there's a mistake?
Contact the ICB on 01 260 0388 and apply for your credit reference report. This costs €6. Alternatively, download and fill out the personal inquiry form from www.ifha.ie, the website of the Irish Finance Houses Association, and enclose a cheque or postal order.
The report will contain your personal details and a history of your credit agreements with member institutions over the past five years, including any current balances. On loans, a repayment profile will show the number of payments in arrears over a 24-month period and the status of the account.
On a leasing contract, payment performance will be ranked from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates that you kept to the terms, 4 means you did not keep to the terms and 5 means you settled early.
The report will contain "footprints" showing the date and identity of all ICB members, if any, that have accessed it in the previous 12 months. So you can find out which financial institutions have been checking you out.
If your report is wrong, the first thing you can do is bring errors to the ICB's attention. They will correct any errors, once they have been confirmed by the financial institution concerned.
If the financial institution disputes that any mistake has been made and you want to pursue a complaint, you may take a case to the Ombudsman for Credit Institutions. For example, you may not have been made aware of the terms of the credit agreement on which the bank says you defaulted.
If you see "footprints" on your report showing that financial institutions from which you never applied for credit have accessed your report, you may consider taking a case to the Data Protection Commissioner.
Your credit report may be out of date. For example, a previous complaint taken to the Ombudsman involved a couple who had fallen into arrears on a loan account and had a judgment registered against them by a loan provider. This was included on ICB records, but the fact that they had later satisfied the amount in full was not.
You can also add a 200-word commentary to your report, explaining why there were delays repaying a previous loan.
If there are no mistakes on your report and you don't have any explanation for why you defaulted on a credit deal, the only option left is to wait. After five years, details of a loan that went wrong will be deleted from the record.
Some lenders advise customers to check their credit reference report when they turn them down for a loan. But if your report seems perfect, it could be that they were just fobbing you off with that excuse, something the ICB has objected to in the past. Ask the lender for a frank explanation as to why it doesn't want you as a customer.
