Guide to credit scoring

Nationwide offers four types of credit: overdrafts, credit cards, personal loans, and mortgages.

When you apply, we check we can offer credit based on your financial circumstances. To do this, we make credit checks. These produce a credit score.

To get a credit score, we use information from:

• your application,
• our own records and
• credit reference agencies.

The way we calculate credit scores, and the minimum level of risk we’d accept, is confidential. Sharing this information could reduce our systems' security and encourage fraud.

The chance of your application being accepted can be affected by:

• your existing credit agreements
• any evidence of credit accounts which had been in arrears
• how much outstanding credit you have when you apply.

You can use soft credit checks before you apply. They give you an idea of:

• whether your application is likely to be accepted, and
• how much you’d be able to borrow.

Soft credit checks do not:

We carry out hard credit checks when you make a credit application.

Even if your application is not accepted, hard credit checks do:

When you make a joint credit application, credit reference agencies link you to that person. This means they may check the other person’s credit history when you apply for credit in the future.

When we do a credit check, we share your information with credit reference agencies.

You have the right to know what information they hold about you. To find out, you can contact them online, over the phone or by post.

We use:

• Experian (opens in a new window)
• Equifax (opens in a new window)
• TransUnion (opens in a new window)