Credit Myth: You Only Have One Credit Score

Since you first started borrowing money and using credit, you’ve known you have a credit score and report. You know that somewhere out there, someone is keeping track of your credit usage, repayment habits, and your risk factor as a borrower. A three-digit number represents all of this, so that future lenders can assess whether or not it’s a good idea to lend to you. You know this as your credit score.

Look at Your Credit Report/s

If you’re a little more savvy when it comes to money, you may have even requested your own credit report a few times. You may have even disputed some items on it you didn’t think should be there. Perhaps you’ve tried to improve your overall score after looking at your report.

Perhaps though, like most people, you think you only need to do this once. Most Canadian adults assume they only have one credit score, one credit report, and that once they’ve seen just one of each, there’s nothing more to see as far as your credit goes. Most Canadians think that if they dispute something on their credit report and they successfully have it removed, that the process is finished, over and done.

You Have Two Credit Scores

This is not the case. As a Canadian, you potentially have two credit scores. In Canada, there are two nationwide credit bureaus and they don’t always share the same information. Equifax operates independently from TransUnion, and vice versa. As such, it is possible that your score and your report are different from each bureau, especially as different creditors can report to different bureaus. Luckily we Canadians are entitled to one free credit report from each bureau per year, though, making it easy to deal with your reports, should they be different in any way. Although these only give you your credit report (history), and don't include your credit score. If you want to check in on your credit score, you can do so by either purchasing it as a one-off, or sign up for a credit monitoring service, like Refresh offers.

Get Your Credit Reports Here

You can grab your credit report from either of Canada’s credit bureaus via the following links:

TransUnion

Equifax

So, if you didn't know you had more than one credit score, now you do!