There literally could be thousands of reasons why you might consider applying for credit – anything from buying your dream house, that’s a few roads down from where you’re currently living, to buying a second-hand cellphone for your teenage daughter who has been dying to get online and start an Instagram feed.

And while we all have our own reasons for applying for credit, one thing is for sure – we all wish we had a crystal ball that we could gaze into to find out if our application was going to be successful or not.

What makes the entire credit application process so nerve-racking is the fact that you don’t really have any idea if your application is going to be approved or declined. Until it’s approved or declined.

You apply, you wait, and you find out, either way. There is no orange light when you apply for credit. It’s green or red.

Truth be told, very few of us even understand how banks and finance companies decide who gets a loan and who doesn’t.

A feeling in our gut might give us a clue, based on our spending habits and the relationship we’ve had with credit agreements in the past. But that’s nothing to go on.

Wouldn’t it be handy to know if you had a fighting chance before you applied for credit?

Our MoneyShop Credit Score is calculated using machine-built models (that just means a lot of smart guys doing some things with a lot of information). In a nutshell, we analyse your profile and compare it to people with similar profiles, who have applied for loans via our website recently, and have been approved or declined.

That allows us to predict your likelihood of being approved for credit via MoneyShop and this is presented as a score out of 1000:

  • If you have a MoneyShop Credit Score of 250, you have a 25% likelihood of getting your credit approved
  • If you have a MoneyShop Credit Score of 500, you have a 50% likelihood of getting your credit approved
  • If you have a MoneyShop Cerdit Score of 750, you have a 75% likelihood of getting your credit approved

How is this different to a normal credit score you can get from a credit bureau?

That credit score is not going to give you an indication of whether you will be approved for a loan. Those credit scores are primarily set up for banks and lenders to have a look at when they are reviewing your credit application.

Your bank might know what a score of 600/720 means, but as a consumer you want to know if you have a chance of submitting a successful credit application or not, right?

Yes, there is value in getting a free credit report from a credit bureau. In fact, the National Credit Act makes it compulsory for credit bureaus to hand this information out for free.

But if you really want to know what your chances are of getting a loan approved, start by getting our Free Credit Report which includes your MoneyShop Credit Score.

Apply for your Free Credit Report now.

Until next time.

The MoneyShop Team