What is Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR)?
Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) refers to additional credit related information being securely provided to credit reporting bodies in Australia. CCR is an important initiative that has been led by the Australian government, through changes to the Privacy Act.
From January 2020, we started to provide CCR information to credit reporting bodies.
CCR captures more information on your credit report, resulting in a more complete and balanced view of your credit history. Previously only information such as credit enquiries, defaults and other public record information were captured in your credit report. With CCR, additional information such the type of account, the credit limit, when you opened or closed an account and up to 24 months of repayment history will be shown in your credit report.
|
Comprehensive Credit Reporting |
Previous credit reporting regime |
|
| Personal information (things like name, date of birth and current address) | yes | yes |
| Credit enquiries | yes | yes |
| Prior defaults | yes | yes |
| Public record information, court judgements and other serious credit infringements | yes | yes |
| Type of account (home loan, personal loan, credit card etc) | yes | |
| Credit limit | yes | |
| Opened and closed dates | yes | |
| Repayment history information – 24 months | yes | |
| Term of loan or credit facility | yes | |
| Financial hardship information (for hardship arrangements entered into from 1 July 2022) | yes |
What this means for you
One of the key changes that CCR has brought to credit reporting in Australia is the reporting of repayment history information for up to 24 months. This means we disclose whether you are up to date or behind on your repayments. If you regularly make your repayments on time, this positive behaviour is reflected in your credit report, and you might see an increase to your credit score. If you miss a repayment by more than 14 days, this is also reflected in your credit report. This means it’s more important than ever to ensure your loans are kept up to date, or let us know if you’re unable to make a repayment or if you’re experiencing financial hardship.
TIP: You can ensure repayments are made on time by setting up an automatic transfer. You can easily do this through Internet Banking or the People’s Choice app.
As additional information is being updated in your credit report each month, you may see your credit score change more regularly.
Credit reporting in Australia
When you apply for credit, we use information in your credit report to help make an assessment on your application.
We will securely provide CCR information on a monthly basis to the three credit reporting bodies in Australia. By providing CCR information to the three credit reporting bodies, it allows us to use CCR information supplied by other credit providers on any of your future applications for credit. For more information on each of the credit reporting bodies, you can visit their websites.
Financial hardship information
From 1 July 2022, information about financial hardship arrangements can be included in your credit report. This information will only be included if you’ve made a temporary arrangement with us due to financial hardship, or if we’ve permanently varied your loan contract because of financial hardship.
If we’ve agreed to a hardship arrangement with you, this will be noted in your credit report for the duration of the arrangement. Your repayment history information will reflect whether you’ve met the required repayments under the hardship arrangement (instead of your usual contractual repayments). If no repayments are required under the hardship arrangement, your repayment history will show as up to date for the period where no repayments are required.
What will my financial hardship arrangement look like in my credit report?
The financial hardship arrangement will be shown as a simple letter code (‘A’ or ‘V’) next to your repayment history, depending on the type of financial hardship arrangement entered into.
- Letter code ‘A’ refers to a temporary financial hardship arrangement. This is a type of short-term relief or deferral of credit obligations. This gets reported each month that the financial hardship arrangement is in place.
- Letter code ‘V’ refers to a variation financial hardship arrangement. This is a permanent variation to the terms of a credit agreement, such as capitalising your arrears after being in a temporary hardship arrangement. This gets reported once, in the month that the permanent variation took place.
What other details should I be aware of when it comes to financial hardship information?
- Financial hardship information will stay on your credit report for 12 months from the end of the hardship arrangement.
- Being in a financial hardship arrangement won’t impact your credit score, which is calculated by each of the credit reporting bodies; Equifax, Experian and illion. However, repayment history information can be included in the calculation of your credit score, so if you’re under a temporary financial hardship arrangement and you miss a payment under the arrangement, your credit score might be impacted.
- Financial hardship information is not a reflection of poor credit management. In fact, having a financial hardship arrangement can prevent missed payments being recorded on your credit report. Importantly, it means a default won’t be recorded.
- Financial hardship information does not exclude you from applying for credit in the future. If your credit report has financial hardship information, a potential lender may ask you for more information about your current situation to understand whether you’re still experiencing hardship.
- A financial hardship arrangement agreed by one account holder will be shown on the credit report for all joint account holders.
- Your credit report won’t include the reason for the financial hardship arrangement or the details of the arrangement.
Need more information?
For more information on CCR and credit reporting in Australia, you can visit the Credit Smart website.
Did you know?
You can now request a free copy of your credit report every three months from each of the credit reporting bodies (previously every 12 months). Contact the credit reporting bodies directly (you will need to provide some identification). It's important to check your credit report to ensure the information contained within is accurate.
Need some help? We've got you covered.
Get in touch with us and we can help you get the answers you need.
