It seems that in modern times you can`t get anything done without telling everyone a list of information that identifies you as you. We`ve all been there whenever you ring the call centre and have to rattle off your mother`s maiden name and the name of your childhood pet. You may well wonder where this will all end…. Are we all going to have to carry our identity papers everywhere with us and present them on demand to local officials?
Well at My Sort of Loan we certainly hope not, but it is important to realise that this is all to protect you from Financial Fraud. If we do feel under siege from our own data just imagine the terrible damage that could be done to us if someone could get access to your identity and use it for their own means. It`s a very sobering thought that someone else could blame their traffic offences on you, take a job in your name, use your income tax allowance or take out a loan or mortgage in your name without your knowledge.
Well the good news is that there are measures that, like all financial institutions, My Sort of Loan have to follow before we can arrange your loan for you and chief amongst these measures is the requirement to prove your address history. Even if there was no requirement for My Sort of Loan to be so vigorous we would still do this anyway, simply to protect our clients.
So if you call My Sort of Loan on 0800 015 9295 and apply for a loan how can we prove your address? How do we tell that you live where you say that you live and you aren`t the next resident along who happens to have picked up some old post? Well when you apply for a loan we will carry out a search of your credit history and the first piece of information that we see is the electoral register.
In most cases, if you happen to have lived in your home for a while we would expect you be registered to vote at your main residence. Unless there are reasons for us to suspect otherwise we can often use the electoral register along with other important information to corroborate your address.
But what then if you`ve only recently moved into you home or just moved back into a home that you`ve owned for a while? How do My Sort of Loan prove my address then? Ok so the electoral register is just one method in those circumstances we can use an official document like an up to date driving licence to confirm your address via DVLA records. We might take steps to back this up with a recent utility bill (i.e. Gas, Electricity or Water rates) or a bank statement. Let`s face it, you might take a while over updating your address with DVLA but you would still keep your driving licence to hand. It`s also unlikely that you would have your bank statements sent to the wrong address from anyone to look through or continue to pay the electricity bill somewhere that you don`t live.
Of course proving your address is only one security measure that My Sort of Loan will employ to keep our clients safer. In addition to proving your place of residence for the last 4 years or so, we also want to make sure that you are who you say you are. Remember the thought of someone taking out a mortgage in your name? Well the last thing we ever want to do is process a loan application in your name that you will never benefit from.
There are two main ways that we can prove your identification, the first and most robust is for My Sort of Loan to have sight of your photo ID driving licence or in date Passport. These documents can be checked against publicly available information and with issuing agencies to ensure that they are indeed the original documents and prove your identity. The second way that My Sort of Loan can prove your identity is an Electronic ID Check. This is when we use information held by the national credit reference agencies to produce a score that tells us if there is any likelihood that there has been an attempt by someone else to use your personal data.
Our lenders will perform a credit check as part of your application process. Normally a credit search will record your publicly available information for 6 years however there are ways that your creditors can extend their presence on you credit profile.
One popular way of causing you continuing issues on your credit profile is to sue you in the county court long after your debt has defaulted. If your creditor is successful this can extend the footprint of the adverse credit information on you credit report by a further 6 years so if you are considering a loan to clear your debts its worth talking to My Sort of Loan before things get the this stage or seeking advice from your local citizens advice bureau.
If you thought that getting a county court judgement is the last word in creditors being able to haunt your credit file long after the debt has defaulted, you would be wrong. After a creditor has obtained a county court judgement against you and its been there for some time it will still disappear after 6 years so what that may also try to do is apply for a charging order against your home. Now if the creditor is successful here a record is made at the land registry and it will never go away until the debt is paid. All that said My Sort or Loan may still be able to arrange a loan to clear a charging order so all may not be lost.
Lets just say this once and for all, ``No``. A financial institution cannot `blacklist` an address, there is no such thing, its an urban myth told by people who don`t understand how debt works. There is some logic to this, for example if somebody had a house repossessed and the address was black listed how would anyone else ever buy it?
What can happen is that when one or more people live at an address and one of those people has a poor credit rating, that credit rating can by association be considered by credit companies when they are looking at providing a credit facility. For example if a couple live at an address and one partner habitually fails to pay their credit bills and the other partner has associated credit with that first person, an underwriter might look at the credit performance of associates when making their decision. This is perhaps where the ``blacklisted`` myth originates but rest assured if you move into an address where the previous occupier had credit problems, so long as the previous occupier is not associated with you, you will not be affected by their credit profile.
