Your credit score isn’t a static measurement and can change on a regular basis. With TotallyMoney, your score is live and updates each day you login to your account, so you’re likely to see your score change more than you might with other credit report providers.
Scores can change because credit reference agencies are continuously receiving new data from lenders, public records, and collection agencies - even the age of your accounts can cause changes to your score. So, it’s completely normal for your score to fluctuate and a few points up or down isn’t usually anything to worry about.
At the bottom of your dashboard under ‘Latest Credit Report Activity’, you can check to see if there’s an alert provided by TransUnion that might indicate why your score has changed.
There are some factors you might not expect to have an impact on your score, such as paying off a debt, closing a credit card, or asking for a higher or lower credit limit. With these, you should see your score recover after a few payment cycles.
Small changes may be due to:
- Using more than 25% of your credit limit. This is known as credit utilisation and you can see more on this under your score analysis.
- How frequently you have used your credit card in the last 6 months.
- The time since last applying for a credit card.
Larger changes may be due to known activity such as paying off a default, or could be due to less noticeable changes that are a result of information 'dropping' off your credit report after reaching the six-year mark.
It’s important to monitor your credit report, and remember: checking it has no impact on your credit rating.
If you can see incorrect information on your report, this may have an impact on your credit score. You can raise a dispute against this information to have this amended.
Check out "Key Factors that impact your credit score" here.