Money Box Live: How to Improve Your Credit Score

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every adult has a credit score but you've been telling us the factors affecting it can be mystifying and frustrating. So in this edition of Money Box Live we've been digging into the inbox to answer your questions on credit scores.

Whether you’re trying to get a mortgage or loan or just the best rate on a credit card, the information on your file can have a big impact at any stage of life, so what does it all mean and if you want to improve yours, how can you do it?

We'll hear from someone battling to rectify his score after fraudsters took over his credit card and we hear from a man with an excellent credit rating who is struggling to get any credit at all.

Felicity Hannah is joined by John Webb, a credit expert at the credit reference agency Experian, and Lisa Webb, a senior lawyer and consumer champion at Which?

Presenter: Felicity Hannah Producer: Sarah Rogers Editor: Jess Quayle

(This programme was first aired on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 23rd of July 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.9	Hello, today on the Moneybox Live podcast, we have been digging into the inbox to answer your questions on credit scores, because some of you are feeling pretty frustrated.
0:15.0	Whether you're trying to get a mortgage or a loan or just the best rate on a credit card, The information on your file can have a big impact.
0:22.6	Our producer Sarah Rogers has been speaking to university levers and their families in Bolton.
0:27.8	There they were, celebrating away, degrees in hand, being asked about their credit scores.
0:33.1	What have you just graduated in? Physiotherapy?
0:35.9	Yes, yeah.
0:36.7	Well, congratulations on your degrees.
0:39.6	I want to know how financially prepared are you.
0:41.6	Do you know what a credit score is?
0:44.0	I don't know.
0:44.7	Yeah, I mean, yes.
0:46.2	Yeah, I don't know exactly, but I've got a all right credit school.
0:49.6	You think yours is high?
0:50.6	Okay, yeah.
0:51.4	Not bad.
0:51.9	I have a credit card, yeah.
0:53.4	I have a credit card, yeah. I have a credit card, so mine is
0:56.0	quite high as well at the moment. I think it's about 600. So I do check the quick week
1:00.3	at these here, so yeah. I have the monthly direct director. It tells me if scores changed or there's
1:05.2	been an activity. The reason I started it is when I first got my mortgage, they offered me a mortgage
1:10.7	in principle, but the bank had pressed the button a couple of times, so they'd done recurrent searches, and it took 80 points off per search. So when I went to get the mortgage, they declined it. When we looked into it, that was why. You're just about to kind of go and start your careers? Yep. Do you know what a credit score is? I don't know what mine is. No, I don't look at it because I'm not a house yet. I've not got a credit card. Never took out alone when the time comes. I don't look at it too much too often. Does it worry you? Are you worried about your own? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm poor.
	...

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