Privacy Legislation (2013) and individual credit rating

Australia’s privacy legislation rewrite in 2013 will allow credit providers to view a lot more information about individual credit behaviour.

 

Lenders currently have access to the following information about you;

  • Your defaults (only over 60 days in arrears),
  • Your insolvency history (ie bankrupt events), and
  • Your credit applications (although they could not see if your application was approved or declined)

 

 

From 1 January 2015 they will be able to see the above, and a lot more…..

  • The date that credit was opened or provided (in other words, if an application was approved)
  • The type of credit approved and what the credit limit is
  • The date that a credit account was closed, and
  • 2 years worth of month by month repayment history on each credit facility that are in place.

Repayment history will report like this (the boxes with numbers represent the days in arrears) –

credit rating table

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of Australia’s lenders have agreed to provide your data to the credit reporting agencies. If a lender does not report this information they do not get to see the information from the other lenders. So it is just a matter of time before every licensed credit provider uses this database.

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