What is Equifax? How to Use Its Services

What is Equifax?

Equifax is a multinational credit reference agency headquartered in the United States. Equifax’s UK business is registered in London and its customer service centre is based in Leicester.

Financial firms can request to see the information that the credit reference agencies, including Equifax, hold about you when you apply for a product with them. This helps them decide whether to accept your application. However, Equifax doesn’t make lending decisions – the lender itself has the final say about whether to go ahead with your application.

Equifax gives you free access to your statutory credit report. You have to pay to see your credit score, though you can sign up for a free 30-day trial if you want to check it before applying for credit.

It costs £14.95 a month to access your credit score through Equifax on an ongoing basis, instead you could check it by using ClearScore, a free service that uses Equifax data to calculate your credit score.

How does Equifax work?

Equifax’s online account is called myEquifax, which you have to sign up for if you want to look at your statutory credit report online.

To create an account, you need to share some personal details and address history, then verify your identity by answering a few questions about your credit history. You should then be able to access your Equifax credit report online.

Viewing your credit score also requires a myEquifax account. Unlike Experian, which gives you free access to a monthly credit score, this is a paid service. However, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial if you want to check your Equifax score before applying for credit.

Your Equifax credit score

You have to sign up for Equifax’s paid membership to see your credit score, which costs £14.95 a month after a free trial.

You don’t have a universal credit score, so your Equifax credit score can look different to scores based on Experian or TransUnion data.

When you apply for credit, the lender may also use its own credit scoring system to assess your creditworthiness. Usually, this is based on data from one or more credit reference agencies, as well as the information you give the lender during your application, such as your salary.

This means your Equifax score can only partly illustrate how a lender may view your application. It’s not a surefire way of knowing whether your application will be accepted or rejected. But if it’s not where you’d like it to be, you may be able to improve your credit score over time.

A good Equifax credit score ranges from 531 to 1000. A good credit score can mean that you’ll have more options for borrowing money at better interest rates. A bad credit score indicates that lenders could view you as a riskier borrower, therefore your options may be more limited and costly.

Equifax credit rating	Equifax credit score
Excellent	811+
Very good	671 to 810
Good	531 to 670
Fair	439 to 530
Poor	0 to 438

Your Equifax credit report

You can see your online Equifax credit report by signing up for a free myEquifax account.

TransUnion allows you to view your online credit report instantly too, but Experian may take longer to access because you have to log in using a passkey that it sends you in the post.

Once logged in to myEquifax, you’ll see a dashboard that allows you to download your credit report as a PDF.

You can also ask for a paper copy of your report from Equifax by downloading and filling out an application form and sending it to them in the post.

Unless you’re a paid member, you won’t be able to see your credit score through myEquifax. Instead, your score is replaced by a question mark on the dashboard, encouraging you to sign up.

Equifax membership: paid features

There are two levels of paid Equifax membership, which both offer the same features, including:

ongoing access to your credit score and a tracker that monitors changes over time
hints, tips and alerts about your credit report
warnings about elements of your credit profile that you could improve
tools to help protect your identity and prevent fraud

The only difference is that the more expensive Family & Friends plan allows up to three adults to get their credit score and report through individual myEquifax accounts. This plan is £22.95 a month instead of £14.95 a month for a sole user.

You can invite someone to a Family & Friends plan from your myEquifax account. Each person will only be able to view their own score and report – details aren’t shared across accounts.

Is Equifax worth it?

Equifax makes it easy to access your online credit report, so it’s worth checking if you’re thinking about applying for credit. For example, if you’re on the electoral roll but notice there are no electoral roll details listed on your Equifax report, you can raise this with the firm.

However, it’s not possible to check your credit score through myEquifax unless you sign up for a paid membership. You can use the free trial if you’d like to see your score and work out whether the paid features are worth it for your needs.

Otherwise, you have to pay £14.95 a month for ongoing access. The Family & Friends plan at £22.95 a month brings the cost down per adult, but is still expensive.

Other services allow you to check your credit score for free, including:

Experian’s basic account
ClearScore, which uses Equifax data
Credit Karma, which uses TransUnion data

Be aware that your score varies depending on who you check it with because each credit reference agency works it out differently.

Is Equifax accurate?

Equifax builds your credit profile based on data reported by financial firms about your financial behaviour, as well as publicly available records. It has a system for working out your credit score based on this information.

In this respect, it’s accurate. But if there’s information that’s missing or doesn’t look right after looking at your report, you should contact Equifax to correct it.

Variations in your score and credit rating across credit reference agencies are normal. Not all financial firms report data to each credit reference agency, plus each one works out your score differently.

However, a large variation can indicate an issue. For example, If you’ve got an ‘excellent’ credit score with Experian but only a ‘fair’ score with Equifax, it’s worth comparing your credit reports with both agencies to find and fix any problems or mistakes.

Is Equifax safe?

Equifax is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK. Equifax must follow laws around data protection, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018.

Equifax has detailed information about privacy and how it handles your data on its website.

In 2023, the FCA fined Equifax for a 2017 data breach that affected 13.8 million UK consumers. The FCA said that Equifax hadn’t taken appropriate steps to protect consumer data.

Following the breach, Equifax says it has spent $1.5 billion on what it claims is a “security and technology transformation”.

When signing up for myEquifax, the company requires you to answer questions about your credit history to confirm your identity and create a password that includes a number, a special character and both upper and lower case letters.

Equifax can also send you an email each time you log in to myEquifax, so if someone else accesses your account you should become aware quickly.

Generally, it’s important to have online safety in mind. This includes using strong passwords, enabling antivirus software and using multi-factor authentication where possible. You can read more about protecting yourself online at the National Cyber Security Centre.

If you’ve signed up for the paid membership, you can cancel it in myEquifax by clicking ‘My Account’ from the menu at the top of the screen.

Equifax says it will delete your credit reports and credit scores when you cancel, so you should download them if you need them.

No, ClearScore is a separate company. Equifax is a credit reference agency, so it gathers information about your credit history and shares this information if a provider requests it after you apply for credit.

ClearScore is a service built intending to give users access to their credit information for free. It isn’t a credit reference agency itself, so instead ClearScore uses Equifax data to generate credit scores and reports.

Image source: Getty Images

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