Most people think that there’s nothing that they can do to improve a poor credit score, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s lots of different ways that you can slightly boost your credit rating, and some take minimal effort. Of course, first of all, you should get one of CreditExpert’s free online credit reports, after all, if your credit rating is already perfect, you don’t need to try to improve it.

The Electoral Roll

One of the things about credit ratings is proving that you live where you say you do and just about the easiest and most reliable way of doing this is to get onto the electoral roll. If the government thinks you live in a certain place, the bank will too, and that will help your chances of application success. For more advice on getting on the electoral roll, check out this site.

Have A Score

Credit ratings exist to help lenders work out whether you’d be a good candidate to borrow money, if you have never borrowed money, there’s no way that they can know. So it’s good advice to get a credit card, even if you rarely use it, just to start building your credit report.

Timing Is Everything

Every time you apply for credit, a search is made on your account, too many searches in a short period can cause you to be flagged. For that reason spread things out, if you’re applying for a credit card, don’t get home insurance and a mobile phone at the same time. Likewise, apply for big things before you move house (a mortgage is a pretty big amount of credit so it has an impact on your rating) and always borrow when you’re earning.

Update Your Accounts

Address errors are the most common reason that transactions or credit applications fail. Thankfully, it’s easy to correct these, though you will have to talk to each of the three credit agencies to get your files corrected. Still, it’s much quicker and easier to write a few emails than to get an application form denied.

Quotation Searches

As mentioned above, every time you make an application you will have a search done on your credit rating, too many searches are bad for your credit health. So, if you’re applying for something specific, like the rate on a credit card, make sure that you ask for the lender to do a ‘quotation search’ rather than a ‘credit search’, they may not, but it’s worth asking and can’t do any harm.

Last, and most importantly of all, keep checking your account on a regular basis, at least once a year and before any big applications should do the trick.