Your credit score, and more, anytime and anywhere. Staying on top of your credit has never been easier with Credit Insights from First Community Bank. With one powerful tool, access your credit score, full credit report, credit monitoring, financial tips, education, and more.
What do you get when you enroll in Credit Insights?
· Daily Access to your Credit Score
· Real-Time Credit Monitoring Alerts
· Credit Score Simulator
· Personalized Credit Report
· Special Credit Offers
· Your Credit Score Action Plan
Access all of this without negatively impacting your credit score! This powerful and free tool is available to all First Community Bank customers on our online banking and mobile app platforms.
A credit score is a three-digitnumber calculated to indicate your creditworthiness. The higher the score, themore creditworthy you are to a lender. A credit score is calculated from theinformation in your credit report and considers your on-time payments, thelength of your payment history, your mix of different types of credit accounts,and other such factors. It is important to know that your score does not takeyour age, income, employment, marital status, or your bank account balancesinto account.
You can learn more about creditscores and scoring models from the Consumer Financial Consumer FinancialProtection Bureau website: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-credit-score-en-315/
40% Payment History Essentially, lenders want to know whether you’re good about paying your loans on time.
23% Credit Usage Credit usage, also known as credit utilization, is the ratio between the total credit used and your total credit limit on your revolving accounts. It is best to keep your credit usage below 30%.
21% Credit Age The average of your oldest open credit accounts to your newest open credit accounts determines your credit age. In general, the longer your credit history the better, particularly accounts with a good payment history and no late payments.
11% Credit Mix It’s important to have a mix of different types of credit like revolving credit and installment loans. Your score will likely be higher if you have a good payment history with both, installment loans, like student loans and mortgages, and revolving credit, like credit cards.
5% Inquiries Any time you apply for a credit card, or a lender checks your credit for a loan, it’s known as an inquiry. Hard inquiries show onyour credit report when your credit is pulled by a lender for a car loan, mortgage, or credit card. However, soft inquiries don’t show on your credit report and occur when you check your credit, or a lender pre-approves you for an offer.
Applying for several credit cards or opening multiple credit accounts in a short period creates hard inquiries and could signal an increased credit risk to a lender.
Credit reports, also known as credit files, are composed of the credit-related data a credit reporting company has gathered about consumers from different sources. Credit reports include records of mortgage payments, credit card balances, credit card payments, auto loan payments, and credit inquiries. It may also include accounts that have gone into collections, public records, and other information from government sources.
Credit reports include the following about your debt accounts:
● A list of creditors that have extended credit or loans.
● Total loan amounts and credit card limits.
● Payment amount and history on all loans and credit lines.
Credit reports may also include:
● Inquiries, each time your credit report was pulled by a lender in the past 2 years.
● Your current and/or former address(es)
● Your current and/or former employers
● Other details of public record
Under Federal law, you are entitled to receive one free copy of your credit report from each credit reporting agency every 12 months. You can obtain a free copy of your credit reports at https://www.annualcreditreport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228. For more information visit https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-credit-report-en-309/.
Given the incredible volume of data provided by lenders to the agencies, there are times when the information reported about your credit activities may be inaccurate. If you find information that you believe is not correct on your credit report, contact the company that issued the account or the credit reporting company that issued the report. You can dispute any inaccuracies found on your TransUnion credit report by navigating to the bottom of the Credit Insights Credit Report and clicking “dispute”.
For more information visit: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/askcfpb/313/what-should-i-look-for-in-my-credit-report-whatare-a-few-of-the-common-credit-report-errors.html
Any institution that lends money– credit unions, banks, credit card companies, financing companies, mortgage lenders, and others – can use a credit score to help them assess whether you meet their lending criteria. These institutions use your credit score along with other relevant information provided by you, such as income, work status, and down payment amount. In general, higher scores allow access to more credit at competitive rates.
Insurance carriers can alsouse credit scores to help assess risk and to accurately price homeowners and automobile insurance policies.
No, a credit score is just one part of several factors lenders use in their lending criteria. Other lending criteria considered may include:
● Loan-to-Value Ratio
● Income
● Current employment and work history
