Guide to credit score factors

For a quick measure of your credit health, your credit score is the place to look. Lenders may use it as part of their criteria when deciding whether or not to extend you credit. It’s important to know not just what your score is, but how it’s calculated. Knowing the credit score factors can help you feel confident in the credit-related decisions you make and help you improve your credit health over time.

What affects credit scores?

Much of the financial information in your credit reports affects your credit scores. Information related to accounts like your payment history and balances, can impact your credit score, along with recent credit applications or negative items like collections or bankruptcies.

It’s important to know that your personal information does not affect your credit scores. This includes not just the personal information you see on your credit report, but things like race, gender identity and religion, to name a few. But even though it may have no direct impact on your credit score, don’t ignore the personal information section of your credit report. If you don’t recognize personal information in your credit report, there may have been an error in the information you provided to a lender or you could be a victim of identity theft.

 

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