The three largest credit reference agencies (CRAs) that lenders use to independently work out your credit score are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. They all have different score ranges, marking out of 999, 700 and 710 respectively. This table shows how they rate each score:
| Experian | Equifax | TransUnion |
Very Poor | 0-560 | 0-279 | 0-550 |
Poor | 561-720 | 280-379 | 551-565 |
Fair | 721-880 | 380-419 | 566-603 |
Good | 881-960 | 420-465 | 604-627 |
Excellent | 961-999 | 466-700 | 638-710 |
If your credit rating scored in the ‘very poor’ or ‘poor’ sections, you will find it a lot harder to get approval for a personal loan. If you do manage to find a personal loan, it is likely to be a ‘poor credit’ loan, with extremely high interest rates. Therefore, although there is no minimum credit score requirement for personal loan, the higher you keep your credit score the better your access to loan options will be.
If your credit score is low, you might want to consider taking out a credit builder credit card, which will help you improve your score over time.