rk164

Hi,

I've been living in California for the past 10 months with my wife.

I was wondering how adversely the UK credit rating gets affected when living abroad (we have the intention of returning to the UK after a few years).

We have a house in the UK which is rented and has a mortgage, but given that we are not on the electoral register, will we be be effectively starting our credit rating from zero when we return?

Thanks in advance

rk164

lj2

Hi RK - I was browsing the "returning to the UK" forum yesterday and there was loads of stuff on this - may be worth looking.

In short, I think people seemed to be having to rebuild their credit histories.

Patrick Hasler

I don't kmow how it can effect it ? ...... Both countries have the same credit agencies, but the transfer of credit history or ratings between the two countries is ilegal under the data protection act !

Bluegrass Lass

Not to hijack the thread, but I wanted to ask a question regarding UK credit. Hubby and I currently live here in the US, but are considering moving to the UK in a few years (he's a UKC). Does one definitely have to be on the electoral register in order to build credit in Britain? Why does one have to be a registered voter to get credit? I'm just trying to understand what one has to do with the other? In the US, voting has nothing to do with credit rating.

MsElui

the uk credit rating is tied into your current and previous addresses (up to 3 years) your credit rating is improved - if you can independantly prove you actually live (or lived) there. One of the best ways of proving it is if you are on the electoral register. If your not its not the end of the world - you just miss a boost to your score.

if you keep accounts open whilst away from the uk - then providing you keep the correspondance going to a uk address - the credit information associated with those accounts will keep current and if you used that as one of your previous addresses when asking for new credit - it would help towards that. If you have no uk correspondance address then there is nowhere for the credit information to tie into and you would lose it.

penguinsix

If you have any sort of recurring payments each month, such as a utility bill or a club membership or something, see if you can put that on your UK credit card and continue to make payments on that card while you are away. Not necessarily use it every day, but say a few $100 a month paid regularly would probably be of some benefit.

Tangentialy to this, I wonder (if/when) they have a national ID in the UK if the credit ratings will start to be based on that number / history instead of primarily address based?