Your Credit History: What You Should Know

Let’s face it, credit is important.

We’re not talking about the alert you receive from your bank when someone pays in some money into your account – although that’s really important too.

We’re referring to Credit score which represents how credit worthy you are.

This number is what lending houses use to determine whether they should give you a loan or not.

Your credit score is not attributed to you by the government or your financial institution. Your credit score is arrived at after a cumulative consideration of your credit history.

Your credit history is a record of monies that you’ve borrowed, whether you repaid, and whether you repaid on time.

After this analysis is done on your credit history, your credit score is then generated.

Your credit score is a single number based on the information from your credit history that lets lenders know how risky it is to lend money to you compared to other borrowers. 

Your credit history goes beyond telling the lender whether to reject or accept your application, it can also prompt the lender to give you loans at a higher or lower interest rate – depending on the level of risk calculated.

Not only can having a good credit score save you tens of thousands of Naira in interest over your lifetime, in the nearest history in Nigeria, your credit score may be used to determine whether you get an apartment, car insurance, or even a job.

Remember when you were told by your mummy that a good name is better than riches? She was right.

Let’s say your good name = a good credit history.

Building a good credit history isn’t Rocket science

Let’s get practical a little bit.

We started life without a credit history, but as we grow, we begin to grow into responsibilities and then at a point in time we may decide to take a loan from a financial partner to help sort out a quick issue at home.

That loan will start counting as a credit history, and what happens is that all other financial service providers will be able to know that you have taken a loan from a service provider.

Congratulations, you have been admitted into the school of credit history and a file has been opened for you.

What you do with that file will determine if your credit history is clean and sufficient to get you another loan or not.

Good credit is about timely re-payments. Making every single loan and credit card payment on time is the single most important thing you can do to build and maintain a good credit history.

Here’s our list of top 5 things you can do to avoid being forced into destroying your credit history

1. Only take loans when you need them
2. Don’t take the amount you need, take the amount you can repay comfortably
3. As much as possible, limit your loans to one at a time
4. Avoid really high interest rate loans as a result of short tenor, space out your loans conveniently enough
5. Know your credit history; this final one might sound a little strange, however, you can get your credit history from independent bodies that collect this data from financial partners.

Such organizations are called credit bureaus and there are three of them currently in Nigeria; CRC Credit Bureau, XDS Credit Bureau, and  CRS Services Credit Bureau.

You can order a self-report from any of the above organizations to review your credit history – although it comes with a cost.

However, If you apply for a loan from Page Financials, we perform your credit check for you free of charge, you are not required to pay anything for that.

Taking a loan from Lender A, refusing to pay, and running to Lender B for another loan isn’t going to help you, first Lender B will know that you owe Lender A, and secondly, you’re just damaging your credit worthiness.

Don’t you think building a good credit history is worth the commitment? We seriously encourage you to try it following the five steps above, and watch the lending offers smile at you the next time you apply for a loan.

For specialized financial advice that will help you maintain a great credit history, or in fact any other money related issue (loans, investments or payments) you can visit our website at www.pagefinancials.com or call our 24 hours customer service on 016317243.

You can also shoot us a quick email at customer@pagefinancials,com and we will be there to take you further.

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