Wonga can help improve your credit rating
August 6th, 2008
Your credit history can be a big factor in the cost of borrowing. Like a school report, good behaviour is rewarded, but if you don’t play by the rules it’ll be noted by the credit bureaus and your grades will suffer!
Lenders may penalise you with higher interest rates, or refuse to lend you anything as a result of a poor credit rating, although it’s worth noting that many banks will be looking to assess your potential profitability as much as any risk of non-payment!
Your credit history looks at current debt, bill payment and a number of other factors. It may seem strange, but not using credit can be as bad for you as behaving badly with it. Lenders are looking to rate your reliability in the past, so if you’ve not yet proven you can be trusted you’ll be classed as higher risk.
Using Wonga.com can actually help improve your credit rating - and fast. This should never be the sole reason for applying for a cash advance of course, but it’s a very useful bonus and could mean better deals from potential long-term lenders in the future.
Wonga is good for your credit rating because we carry out a credit check as part of our sophisticated decision process. When you take a short term loan from Wonga we create a SHARE account, which is a way for lenders to see the past behaviour of potential customers with other companies. Thanks to our hi-tech systems we update this information very rapidy with good news, everytime you repay a cash advance on time.
It means other potential lenders, such as mortgage providers, banks and credit card companies, get almost instant visibility of your trustworthy use of our service. Anecdotal evidence from testers and customers suggests it’s a very quick way of improving your ‘FICO‘ score, which is a rather mysterious rating used by some credit bureaus and can play a deciding role in applications with some lenders.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I borrowed £50.00 and repaid it then applied for another £50.00 and was refused. What a con Wonga is. I was told when a loan was repaid it will help you get a higher loan. WHAT RUBBISH !!
October 29th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
To Chris, we’re sorry to hear you were disappointed by the rejection of your second loan application and can understand the frustration.
However, nowhere on the site do we guarantee future approval based on previous use of the service alone.
Our ‘trust rating’ system can indeed give people the flexibility to borrow more after repaying a previous loan, but we are committed to responsible lending and judge every single application we receive on its own merit.
Previous use of the service and lots of other factors are taken into consideration by our decision system and, while previous sensible use helps improve your chances of approval it’s never a guarantee. That’s because we take a genuine interest in the ongoing financial health of our customers.
Finally, one decline does not mean you will not be accepted in the future, so we hope we can be of service again in the future. You are welcome to contact the customer care team if you suspect there may have been an error with your last application.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:06 am
i was refused about 3 weeks ago, then re-applied & was accepted, which i find strange seeing as my circumstances & details etc were all exactly the same as when i got refused … lol im happy i got it, but how random !!??
May 25th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I have had a few wonga loans which I have repaid in full but none have appeared on my credit file. I have adverse credit and would like the benefit of having these repaid loans on my file, so why haven’t they appeared? it says above ‘can actually help improve your credit rating- and fast.’ -Obviously not as fast as I would like it to.
May 28th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Hi Elaine. It can take some time to show, but we do report all good use of the service (timely repayments) back to our credit agency partner. By ‘fast’ we meant much faster than with a traditional bank loan, for example, which you normally have repay over several years. However, if you want to double check, you could contact our customer care team and ask them to look at your account. Thanks for using Wonga!