Apply For a MortgageGet Help Rebuilding Your Credit History
It’s no secret that your credit score and history impact your ability to get a credit card, enter a cellphone contract, finance a car or even buy a home. Life events like bankruptcy or a consumer proposal happen, and it’s important to know that you can rebuild your credit history and achieve your financial goals – especially with our credit repair services. Understanding the credit bureaus and what’s on your credit report is essential.
Get help rebuilding your credit history
Ross Taylor is passionate about the credit repair industry and has helped hundreds of clients.
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You’ll get a customized personal finance plan and one-to-one assistance to correct reporting errors and boost your credit score.
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We work with the credit bureaus to help eliminate reporting inaccuracies and negative information that may be dragging down your personal credit score.
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When creditors review your file, you’ll be positioned in the best possible light.
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We’ll provide tips for optimizing your score.
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You’ll get a credit score BOOST! We will tell you upfront what you can expect.
We have seen credit rating increases from 60 to 190 points in less than a week!
Book your free consultation today
| Credit Repair Services | Equifax Canada $495 | Trans Union Canada $395 | Both Credit Bureaus $795 |
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| A detailed review of all related documents | 
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| A copy of your credit report |
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| Access to a secure portal to store your personal documents |
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| Score improvement assessment & Options |
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| Preparation of a package to send to Trans Union | 
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| Telephone and email support |
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| One year follow up consultation |
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| We will become your authorized representatives in dealing with Equifax |
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| Insights into your credit score increase potential |
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| A BOOST to your personal credit score |
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| Guaranteed FAST result |
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| Need more info? Book your free consultation today | BOOK A CALL | BOOK A CALL | BOOK A CALL |
What creditors look for when deciding to lend you money:
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A responsible approach and history towards managing multiple credit facilities.
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On-time monthly payment obligations, no missed payments.
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A history of managing significant credit limits without “going on tilt.”
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History of holding various credit products – like credit cards, student loans, mortgages, cell phones, leases etc.
Why your credit history matters
Your credit score tells lenders what type of borrower you are and how you handle your money. It shows trustworthiness with debt and credit and a reduced risk of instances like foreclosure, repossessions, and other concerns the lender may have.
You can get FREE credit reports from Equifax Canada, including a free credit score, by subscribing here – it is free for 30 days, followed by a monthly fee.
Credit Repair Advice
Credit Repair Guide
We understand there are a lot of credit counselling scams and fake credit repair company promises on the internet. For that reason, here are nine free tips for boosting your credit score.
We’ve developed some of the best credit repair tactics to get your credit profile back on track or continue your credit building venture.
1) Never Exceed Credit Limits
When you have a tradeline hovering around its limit, you are at risk of going over – which ends up being a dangerous habit to break. And it may happen innocently – you started out under the limit, but with interest charges and possible over-limit penalties, you are now in uncharted territory with bad debt.
2) Accept All Offers of Increased Limits
You should always welcome credit limit increases. You look healthier and stronger to anyone checking your credit because your limits have some heft to them. And, as an added bonus, you instantly reduce your percentage utilization on any tradeline with an increased limit. This often results in a higher credit score.
3) Spread Your Balances Around
When maximizing your personal credit score, you should look at your utilization of available credit for each individual tradeline. In other words, what percentage of your available credit is the balance being reported?
If you must carry credit balances, try to spread them around – if your goal is to maximize your score at all times.
4) Exercise All Cards and Lines of Credit
We tend to favour one particular credit card (maybe we like the rewards program) even if we have multiple cards at our disposal. And most of the time, we don’t even need our personal line of credit.
If these trade lines get stale, then they are not pulling their weight. Update the date of the last activity (DLA) with a modest transaction and then pay it off online immediately.
5) When In Doubt, Do NOT Cancel a Credit Card
Closing an older, unused credit source is rarely the best as they contribute to your’ score juice’. Personal credit is a reflection of your past and present. The older stuff on your credit report carries weight, so it may not be the wisest thing to shut down that history.
If you want to close the card to avoid an annual fee, just ask the card issuer to downgrade your card to a free card – you will retain your valuable history but avoid annual fees (and the chance of forgetting to pay the fee).
6) Pay Your Active Credit Cards At Least Twice Monthly
Conventional wisdom for debt management says that you should wait for your card issuer to send you a statement, then wait out the interest-free grace period before finally paying off your balance just in time to meet the due date.
But there is very little benefit to that these days. In the mid-eighties, when you had money market bank accounts yielding 10% on your savings, then this was important. Savings and chequing account interest rates nowadays are somewhere between pathetic and woeful, so there is little financial benefit to delaying debt settlement.
7) Pay Disputed Items – Then Argue Your Position
You may have been angered by charges you were certain did not belong on your credit card statement. But never refuse to pay and wait out the investigation process.
Unfortunately, by doing that, you run two risks:
By not clearing the balance to zero, everything charged to the card after the next due date will incur credit card interest rates from the date it was charged (19.99% or more from day one)
And depending on other usages on the card, there is also the risk of late payments being reported to the credit bureaus. These late payments can stay on your record for six years!
My own experience has always been that card issuers do the right thing when fraud or errors are at hand. So, I pay the charge(s) and wait for the credit to come back into my account once the investigation is complete.
8) Use It Or Lose It
If you never borrow money, or you have a credit card in your wallet and never actually use it, you will eventually have nothing generating a credit score for you. And you may end up with no score at all. We used to call these files a Beacon Reject. (Actually, we still use this dated terminology, even though we don’t ask the credit bureau for the Beacon score anymore.)
9) Scour and Clean All Reporting Errors
There may be some incorrect information in your personal credit history that is needlessly dragging down your score. Those are easy and necessary fixes. And the impact on your personal credit score can be profound. Also, never allow debt to go to a collection agency; this can leave a poor credit mark on your history.
A few examples include:
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You have two or more personal profiles with the credit bureau – your information is scattered and diffused. Combining it all into one credit report could very well increase your score. (This often happens to people whose name is hard to spell or who have legally changed their name.)
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Late payments are being reported when it is not you. Maybe you have a relative with the exact same name.
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That router you returned to the cable company is showing as a collection even though you returned it to the local store.
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You completed a consumer proposal, and all the debts included in the proposal should be reporting zero balances, NOT as R9s.
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There may be incorrect late payments – Equifax Canada states payment history has a 35% weighting on your personal credit score.
Let me repeat: errors on your report are bad, and fixing them may be the easiest way to improve your credit score.
There are two credit reporting agencies in Canada. Trans Union Canada, and Equifax Canada. Different lenders and card issuers favour one or the other, and you can go to their websites and purchase a copy of your online report and score anytime.
Have questions? Let’s connect.
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Your credit score is a singular number representing your trustworthiness with credit. The higher your score, the less risk lenders feel when offering you credit products.
Your credit history represents your entire credit timeline. It includes your loan products, repayment history, and everything associated with your credit. This is much more in-depth than just good credit or bad credit.
The credit bureaus use your credit history to formulate your credit score.
Therefore, you must review your credit history annually for reporting errors as they can negatively impact your credit score.
Canadians are much more aware of their credit history than at any time in our history. These days it seems most Canadians can tell you their personal credit score.
What are credit history and credit score, and who are Transunion and Equifax?
Two credit monitoring agencies in Canada keep track of all your credit:
Equifax and Transunion (we do not use Experian in Canada).
They report a snapshot of this history (usually 6 or 7 years) to their lender clients when requested.
What do these agencies report?
Your credit history includes essential personal info like:
Your name
Date of birth
Residence
Employment history
But most importantly, it includes:
the various credit and loan products you have
your repayment history
balance owing
utilization of these products.
These credit bureaus take this history and package it into a credit score that they share with lenders who are considering you for finance or loan products.
Whether it’s a paid company or a free one – each credit reporting agency calculates your credit score slightly differently.
Even the score your lender sees will be different from the one you pull with a reporting agency like Equifax or Borrowell.
So what can you do?
Until you’re arranging a loan with a mortgage agent or lender and they pull your true credit score with a “hard” credit check from FICO, we ALWAYS recommend ensuring your credit score is as strong as possible by following our “5 ways to build your credit score.”
If your credit score is either growing or staying strong, you’ll always be heading in the right direction!
If you spot any errors reporting in your credit history, how do you get rid of them?
Both Equifax and Trans Union provide investigation request processes to remove these harmful errors.
A few examples of errors you need to remove are:
-Your report shows late payments, balances owing, or negative items which you know to be false (could also be a sign of identity theft).
-Mismatched date of birth, or you changed your name, and it is not showing on your credit report.
-Collection accounts showing as unpaid or status unknown when in fact, they have been settled
-Liens showing as unpaid or status unknown when in fact, they have been settled
-Missing credit cards and other loan products.
Your credit score is a huge determining factor when applying for any loan. Whether you’re looking to finance a car, a mortgage, or even a home rental, your credit score will determine your success.
With that in mind, here are five tips to increase your credit score!
Keep your balance owing and utilization rate really low.
Ideally, you are paying your balance in full each month BEFORE your statement due date.
Accept all credit limit increases.
This makes you seem stronger and also lowers your utilization rates.
Have access to multiple credit cards to build your score.
You need more than one credit card in your personal credit report—two or three items at least, ideally.
Never, ever miss any payments.
If you do, it may set your score back by 100 points and take you the better part of a year to rebuild it.
Use all your credit cards and lines of credit every six months.
Even if you don’t need to! Unused cards have little impact on your personal credit score – so let them out for exercise now and then.
After you’ve handed in all your credit cards following a consumer proposal, how do you start rebuilding?
First of all, you need to get a new credit card. Capital One is the best issuer for people trying to rebuild their credit. They offer a secured credit card, which means you pay upfront for validation and to set your balance. Once you have your new card, it’s time to rebuild and prove yourself to be a responsible user.
The best way to do this is:
Actively use your new card and make frequent payments.
Make sure you pay off the balance in full and keep your utilization rates down.
This way, you can prove to your credit card issuer that you are responsible, and they are more likely to increase your credit limit.
There is a bit of a misconception that making a credit inquiry will tank your credit score.
The truth is: that if you’re asking for an inquiry to present to a lender, there is usually no negative effect at all. If there is, it is usually between 5-8 points.
Without a credit inquiry, you can’t get pre-approved for a mortgage. When rates are rising steadily, this can cost you thousands!
One inquiry can be reused every day for 30 days and given to different lenders at no extra cost.
Two separate mortgage-related inquiries within 45 days have the same impact as a single inquiry.
Regardless of why you need access to your credit history, it’s important to know how to request it and if it will cost you anything.
Equifax and Transunion’s credit monitoring services will provide your credit history for free via post.
Equifax offers an entire month of free access.
Trans Union charges a reduced rate of $4.95 for the first month.
Credit Karma and Borrowell are free online services, but their reports are not always accepted by those who request a credit history.
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada is a Federal agency designed to protect the legal rights of consumer financial products and services. This non-profit agency is the Canadian counterpart to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States.
As a Canadian, be wary of anyone claiming to be the CFPB looking for social security numbers and credit repair scams coming from the dark web.
Similarly, the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA) is an American statute that does not apply in Canada.