Understanding your credit score is important since it may help you determine your chances of being approved on your credit applications. Your credit reports score usually will help lenders and credit institutions to determine if you are good enough for credit that you have applied for. Lenders would need to be ensured that people they lend money to are able to pay back their loans. That is the purpose of a person’s credit report.

When a person applies for a personal loan or mortgage on their homes, lenders would usually check upon a person’s credit history to see if one is a good borrower in that he or she pays back on credit dues on time.

A person’s credit history would help lenders determine the risk of that they put themselves in when approving a person’s credit. In a way, credit institutions are trying to protect their own investments (in terms of handing out credit) by checking out a prospective borrower’s credit report score.

In essence, a person’s credit report is part of the lender’s background check. It is a detailed history of a person’s borrowing habits. From it, lenders are able to extract the following information about the credit applicant:

• It provides a person’s identifying information such as one’s complete name, past and current addresses, date of birth as well as a person’s employment history
• A record of accounts that previous lenders have submitted to who the individual has loaned from in the past. This record includes the type of credit extended (mortgage, credit card, car loan, etc.), the amount of credit, the date when it was opened and a record of payments already made as well as the remaining balance.
• A record of inquiries made on the credit report for a period of two years. This includes voluntary inquiries made for previous credit applications as well as involuntary inquiries made by the lender without the knowledge of the credit report holder.
• A collection of information of state and country court records associated with previous loans made. The credit report also includes recorded information about previous bankruptcies, lawsuits, foreclosure of properties, liens and other judgments that can be attributed to previous loans made.

When availing of the credit report, the lender or credit institution may also get hold of a person’s credit score. A credit score is calculated based on the information that is provided by the credit report. This is usually done by credit reporting agencies that consider the information and provide the necessary score to help lenders better assess your future credit risk level.

Your credit score is also being more commonly referred to your FICO score. The reason for this is because most of the credit scores are calculated using a software developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation, also known as FICO. Your FICO score can range from 300 to 850. The higher your FICO score figures, the lower your credit risk is perceived by lenders, thereby giving you better chances of being approved for credit.

Understanding your credit reports score makes it also easier for you to determine your own chances of being approved for a particular credit application. If you know that you have a high FICO score, you can then try your best to maintain or even improve on it in order to increase your credit chances with a number of lenders.

Knowing that you have a low FICO score may also do you some good. This knowledge will motivate you to act upon improving your credit score in order to make yourself less of a credit risks to lenders the next time that you apply for another loan.