Check your credit report online
Don’t let old debt get in your way
By Sharon Oosthoek
If getting your finances in order tops your list of priorities, then dealing with debt likely looms high on your to-do list. The best place to begin is with your credit rating, the official record of your financial history.
A credit report is compiled by a credit agency using information gathered from your past and current creditors, such as your credit card companies. It gives prospective lenders information to assess how likely you are to repay debts. Lenders use this information to determine whether to give you credit and what rate of interest to charge you. Under the federal Consumer Reporting Act, you are entitled to a copy of all the information a credit agency has on file about you.
Why your credit report matters
Knowing what’s in your credit report is invaluable, says financial counsellor Amanda Marshall who works for FGI, a company in Thornhill, Ont., that runs employee assistance programs. After all, she says, a credit history has a major impact on a person’s ability to rent or buy a home and secure credit when paying cash is not an option.
“You need to know where you stand,” says Marshall, who often helps employees in dire financial straits. “Even the video store wants a credit card on file in case you never bring back that video.”
Information in a credit report
The three largest credit bureaus in Canada are Equifax Canada, TransUnion Canada and Northern Credit Bureaus Inc.
These bureaus act as clearing houses, storing information about your credit history. The details in your report come from lenders you have applied to for credit.
Your credit report lists personal information such as your name, social insurance number, employer, address and birth date. It also includes credit information such as your payment history, current debt compared to available credit, bankruptcies and collection orders. This kind of information stays on your file for six years.
How to obtain your credit report online
Obtaining your credit rating used to mean waiting for a report to arrive by snail mail. Now two major Canadian credit agencies provide credit reports online. Both maintain the same information on your credit history. For $14.95, you can get your report from TransUnion Canada. For $15.50, you can get your credit report online from Equifax Canada. Northern Credit Bureaus Inc. does not yet provide reports online.
Toronto mother Corinne Lebret recently consolidated some debts and wanted to check out her credit rating. Lebret got her report from TransUnion, paying online with her credit card. She received her credit report “pretty much instantly,” she says.
Be ready to answer verification questions
Lebret found the process simple and secure. She was prompted to answer a series of questions so that TransUnion could verify she was asking for her own credit report.
“They asked a lot of questions where they give you the choice to pick personal info, such as addresses, account numbers, loans and credit card numbers, or employment info,” she says.
To ensure security of personal information, both TransUnion and Equifax use sites with encryption when consumers provide and receive sensitive information.
How to receive your report by mail
While online is certainly the fastest and easiest way to get your report, you can also get it for free via snail mail by downloading and filling out a Consumer Request form at TransUnion, a Your Credit Report at Equifax or the Declaration and Identity forms at Northern Credit Bureaus.
What a credit rating system means
The most common way of evaluating how creditworthy you are is the R0 to R9 rating system. If you are assigned an R0 rating, you’re too new to rate. R1 means you pay your debts within 30 days, or as agreed. R9 is the rating you want to avoid. It means you have a bad debt, are in the sights of a collection agency or are bankrupt.
What if there are errors in my credit rating?
CBC Television’s Marketplace program once asked 100 people to check their credit reports for errors. More than 40 found mistakes. For 13 of those people, the mistakes were serious enough to affect their ability to get credit. The onus is on you to fix errors on your credit report, says Marshall. “Depending on what it is, it can be very difficult to get it off.”
For example, if your report indicates a bankruptcy that shouldn’t be there, you would have to contact that bankruptcy trustee (which provided the erroneous bankruptcy information) and get copies from the trustee saying they made a mistake. Forward that information to the credit bureau, wait six months and check your credit report again.
Who has access to your credit rating?
Only you and those to whom your permission is given have access to your report. Karen Grant of TransUnion says creditors who ask for your report must get your consent. TransUnion’s privacy policy states that, “It is TransUnion’s practice not to collect, use or disclose personal information unless an individual consumer is aware of the purposes for which the information will be used or disclosed, and has given his or her consent to such use or disclosure. In almost all cases, consumers will not provide consent directly to TransUnion, but to one of our clients.”
Resources
To learn more about your credit rating, check out MasterCard Canada’s web site. Another good resource for information on credit reports is CanLaw, a free lawyer referral service.
