See more FAQs on financial hardship.
What is Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR)?
Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) refers to additional credit related information being securely provided to credit reporting bodies in Australia. CCR is an important initiative that has been led by the Australian government, through changes to the Privacy Act. From January 2020, we started to provide CCR information to credit reporting bodies. CCR captures more information on your credit report, resulting in a more complete and balanced view of your credit history.
CCR provides a more holistic picture of a customer’s credit history than the previous regime, which only included information such as credit enquiries, defaults and other public record information.
What's included in CCR?
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Personal information (things like name, date of birth and current address)
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Credit enquiries
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Prior defaults
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Public record information, court judgements and other serious credit infringements
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Type of account (home loan, personal loan, credit card etc)
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Credit limit
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Open and closed dates
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Repayment history information for 24 months
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Term of loan or credit facility
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Financial hardship information for 12 months from the end of the hardship arrangement (for hardship arrangements entered into from 1 July 2022)
Credit reporting in Australia
When you apply for credit, we use information in your credit report to help make an assessment on your application. We will securely provide CCR information on a monthly basis to the three credit reporting bodies in Australia. By providing CCR information to the three credit reporting bodies, it allows us to use CCR information supplied by other credit providers on any of your future applications for credit.
Visit the websites of the credit reporting bodies below, and see Credit Smart's website for more information on CCR and credit reporting in Australia
What this means for you
One of the key changes that CCR has brought to credit reporting in Australia is the reporting of repayment history information for up to 24 months.
This means we disclose whether you are up to date or behind on your repayments.
- If you regularly make your repayments on time, this positive behaviour is reflected in your credit report, and you might see an increase to your credit score.
- If you miss a repayment by more than 14 days, this is also reflected in your credit report.
This means it’s more important than ever to ensure your loans are kept up to date. Let us know if you’re unable to make a repayment or if you’re experiencing financial hardship.
It's also important to check your credit report to ensure the information contained within is accurate.
Tips to manage your credit report
FAQs
The financial hardship arrangement will be shown as a simple letter code (‘A’ or ‘V’) next to your repayment history, depending on the type of financial hardship arrangement entered into.
Letter code ‘A’ refers to a temporary financial hardship arrangement. This is a type of short-term relief or deferral of credit obligations. This gets reported each month that the financial hardship arrangement is in place.
Letter code ‘V’ refers to a variation financial hardship arrangement. This is a permanent variation to the terms of a credit agreement, such as capitalising your arrears after being in a temporary hardship arrangement. This gets reported once, in the month that the permanent variation took place.
A financial hardship arrangement agreed by one account holder will be shown on the credit report for all joint account holders.
We will provide you with a reason in writing as to why you did not meet our hardship criteria. You may wish to seek hardship advice from a financial professional or external support service.
- Financial hardship information will stay on your credit report for 12 months from the end of the hardship arrangement.
- Being in a financial hardship arrangement won’t impact your credit score, which is calculated by each of the credit reporting bodies. However, repayment history information can be included in the calculation of your credit score, so if you’re under a temporary financial hardship arrangement and you miss a payment under the arrangement, your credit score might be impacted.
- Financial hardship information is not a reflection of poor credit management. In fact, having a financial hardship arrangement can prevent missed payments being recorded on your credit report. Importantly, it means a default won’t be recorded.
- Financial hardship information does not exclude you from applying for credit in the future. If your credit report has financial hardship information, a potential lender may ask you for more information about your current situation to understand whether you’re still experiencing hardship.
- Your credit report won’t include the reason for the financial hardship arrangement or the details of the arrangement
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