On the 24th of January 2018 a significant milestone was passed on behalf of the nation’s estimated 11 million private tenants1.
Ian Cuthbert, 34, who works and lives in Norwich, signed up with us to register his rental payments and begin making them count towards his credit history, and he now has nearly a year's worth of rental payments recognised through CreditLadder.
Ian is special, though. He was the first tenant in the UK and possibly the world to authorise his bank to enable a third party to read his account each month and record his rental payments.
He and his partner pay £700 a month for a two-bedroom property near Norwich.
Credit history
Ian's rental payments are being added to his credit history in the same way that a householder with a home loan has their mortgage payments added to theirs.
And the beauty of using CreditLadder is that Ian can achieve all this without having to involve his landlord.
“My partner and I are planning to buy a home in a few years’ time and I’ve been realising more and more that I need to improve my chances of getting a mortgage,” he says.
“So I’ve been looking at how I manage my credit cards and trying to make little tweaks here and there to my finances so that I present myself as trustworthy to lenders.
“I was thinking to myself that I pay the rent on time every month and wondering if that counted towards my credit score, and then I saw an article on MoneySavingExpert.com about CreditLadder so I decided to sign up.”
How does Open Banking work?
If you’re wondering what Open Banking is, or why it’s important, then this is how it works.
Open Banking went live in the UK in early 2018 and so far nine banks have signed up to enable their customers to allow third parties like CreditLadder to ‘read’ their bank accounts.
It’s a simple process for tenants that only takes a few minutes to set up and can be done via our webs app.
If you’d like to join Ian and add rental payments to your credit history, then why not sign up too.
Sources
1. English Housing Survey 20017/18, 2011 Census.
Remember, CreditLadder can help you improve your credit score.
CreditLadder can improve your credit position by reporting your rent payments. CreditLadder is the first way to improve your credit score and position across all three of the main Credit Reference Agencies in the UK, namely Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Building up a high credit score has a lot of benefits, including helping you access finance at better rates - this can also help save you money. CreditLadder also runs a free mortgage application service in partnership with Tembo which will tell you how much you could borrow.
Remember the content provided in this article is for information purposes only and should not be considered as advice.