# Irish Credit Bureau CRIF Scores - can anyone translate/explain?



## nimu (21 Mar 2011)

Hello

Is there anyone who has experience/knowledge on how an ICB CRIF 2 score is calculated?

Firstly, apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, but it was the most suitable place I could see! Secondly, apologies for the length of the post - just wanted to give as much info as possible.

The background to my query is as follows....My partner applied for a loan two weeks ago and was declined. We couldn't understand the reason for the decision as it was well within his repayment capacity, he is a full time permanent PAYE worker with no major outgoings (e.g. no car loan, no mortgage, no rent) and he maintains a healthy balance on his current account ( and has never been overdrawn). He applied for the loan online with his own bank at night time a couple of weeks ago and a letter arrived within three days saying he had been declined. He ordered his credit report and it arrived today. On the credit report it shows his bank accessing his report at 22:19 and 22:16 on 10/03/2011. There are two histories on his report - one for a HP and one for his credit card. 

The HP was for Harvey Norman in the region of €1700 (zero per cent finance). It was fully paid within the 24 months and is showing as paid in full with no arrears or missed payments in the history. The CRIF 2 score against this was 520. 

The second account is a credit card account. It shows a outstanding balance of €600, credit limit of €3,900 and 24 months of up to date payments (no arrear, no missed payments). The CRIF 2 credit score against this is 508.

Can anyone shed some light why two up to date accounts with no arrears or missed payments would have scores this low? The amounts in both cases are quite low - can this affect a score in a negative manner?

Also, does anyone think it is odd that his bank accessed these records seemingly on an automated basis  twice at night time, with only three minutes between checks ? I would be very surprised if the decision is computer generated based on scores without human rationale applied!!

Would you think the ICB would explain the rating if contacted? 

To top this off, I recently got my own report and I have a higher score even though I had missed payments/arrears on a loan a couple of years ago. It really doesnt make sense........

Any feedback appreciated. Thanks!


----------



## wbbs (21 Mar 2011)

The credit scoring system used for automatically processing loans depends on lots of answers in the application and not just the icb and I would certainly believe the decline decision is computer generated, it could be any number of things.    It depends on the bank I imagine but in my experience the system was totally automated and a human input only came into play if the customer queried the decision, especially if he did the application online then no one was even going through the application at the time and ensuring it was presented in best way.


----------



## mel.b (22 Mar 2011)

My understanding from reading the ICB website [broken link removed] is that the highest score for CRIF is 550. The higher the score, the lower the credit risk you are thought to be. I recently had a Tesco credit card declined and when I got my credit report I also had a very high (ie low risk) score. it really does just seem that the banks won't (can't!) lend at the moment.


----------



## nimu (22 Mar 2011)

Thanks to you both for your replies.

I have just noticed that one of the records is missing data for month 1 and month 13 (i.e. it was not reported as paid/unpaid by the finance company even though it was paid). Would this negatively affect a score? 

Sorry to be banging on....just trying to gain some understanding of how this works.


----------

