I’m just finishing work on an ITV1 Tonight for Friday 8 May on credit ratings on how they work and how to boost them. As always when filming a detailed programme like this I learn new useful titbits which I can add to the guide (see credit ratings).
Each time though, it tends to be something even more niche and technical, this time it was that you can delink your credit score if you’ve a still open but not active joint account, plus for the first time looked into fraud scoring with National Hunter (the guide should be updated with that by tomorrow).
What was funny about this though is my first EVER TV package was on credit ratings and how they work. It was back in January 2000, I’d just left the BBC and was starting at Simply Money TV as a reporter. The channel hadn’t launched yet and we were doing films for pre-launch; so I did a six-minute film on how credit ratings work.
It was back then I remember coining the phraseology I still use now: “Credit ratings don’t exist. Credit Blacklists don’t exist. Each lender has its own unique scoring system to work out if you’re a profitable customer.” Thankfully no editions exist on You Tube; it was a long time ago and I was a rather shy first time 27 year old new reporter (I’d been a producer previously).
I’ve since written and done a lot on credit ratings, and each time the knowledge base grows. This particular programme was fun to do as we had a panel with James, who runs education for Experian, and mortgage broker Ray Boulger of John Charcol. I think by the end of it we’d all learned little titbits off each other and hopefully the programme’s better for it.
