Aussie and Experian launch credit reporting site

Aussie Home Loans has joined forces with credit reporting agency Experian to launch a website offering access to free consumer credit scores and lots of information on credit reporting, scoring and management of personal finances.

Consumers can also sign up on the website, creditSavvy.com.au, for free monthly credit score updates, a credit file monitoring service and alerts.

The offer is similar to Veda's VedaScore service, which is available for a fee. The data analytics company FICO offers a consumer credit scoring service through partner banks.

creditSavvy was launched on the first anniversary of the introduction of comprehensive credit reporting - an overhaul of the credit reporting rules that allowed credit providers to add a lot more information to consumer credit reports.

A credit report and a credit score are not the same thing. While credit reports are collections of data submitted to credit bureaus by credit providers, credit scores are proprietary - made up of credit file data as well as a range of other personal information, which is then thrown into an algorithm.

Experian's credit scores range from zero to 1000, with a high score representing a high degree of creditworthiness.

creditSavvy will be a welcome addition to financial literacy services covering credit reporting, which are thin on the ground and have had little impact on consumer awareness.

Experian released the results of a survey, which showed that 80 per cent of Australians had never accessed a credit report and only seven per cent requested a credit report over the past six months.

Thirty-four per cent said they didn't know what a credit report was and 77 per cent didn't know how credit scores were used by credit providers to assess creditworthiness. Only 18 per cent knew about the comprehensive credit reporting changes.

The level of consumer awareness has not moved in the year since comprehensive credit reporting was introduced, suggesting that the industry has failed to meet its consumer education obligations.

The managing director of credit services at Experian, Andy Sheehan, said: "It is fair to say that the needle has not moved but the industry is still in a state of transition. We will see more movement this year."

Sheehan said Experian was working with lenders on system development and data testing.

He was not prepared to say how many financial institutions Experian was working with or when he expected them to start accessing credit reports with comprehensive data.

Last month, Veda chief executive Nerida Caesar said Veda was working with a group of early movers, including one of the big banks, building comprehensive credit reporting capability and testing it. Three million files have been loaded to date.

"It is going to plan. We are getting data loaded and the next phase is to get the early movers to draw down positive data," Caesar said.