Why You Should Monitor Your Credit Report and Score Once You are on a Mortgage or any other Debt Payment Deferral Program

• The banks all have automated systems that report on your Credit Bureau that you did or did not make a payment as agreed. When the payment is controlled by a Pre-authorized Debit the bank’s system knows when the payment is due and debits your account.
• When a payment request is rejected, usually due to insufficient funds or a cancellation made by you, the bank’s systems then automatically notifies the Credit Reporting Bureaus (Equifax and TransUnion) of the late payment.
• When the bank grants you a payment deferral they re-set your next payment due date for the date that you are to re-start making payments. So if you started a 6-month deferral on April 1 the bank re-sets your next payment due date to October 1.
• With these deferral programs being a brand new process and the banks scrambling to do this in a very short timeline, it is possible a few mortgage payments may end up not being re-set to the deferred date. This will be unusual, but it is possible. Those who made the deferral agreement with their bank just a very few days before of their next payment might be more at risk of that happening.  Again, it will be very rare.
• Check your credit reports weekly for the next 5-6 weeks to ensure there are no errors on your credit report related to any mortgage or other payment deferrals.
• If you find there is an incorrect reporting of a late or missed payment, write immediately to your Bank and strongly request that they immediately correct their reporting to all Credit Bureaus that they report to, and also have them write you a letter confirming that the reporting was incorrect. Make sure they refer in the letter to exactly what was incorrectly reported, when, and any other relevant details.
• So with that in mind, now is a great time to begin the process of monitoring your credit report and credit score. See below what that looks like – it is very easy, free, and completely automatic.

How to Automate the Monitoring of Your Credit – and How to Check it Manually

You can easily have your bank monitor your credit for you, which will result in alerts when your credit is pulled, and perhaps other alerts as well. To do this login to your bank account and activate their free credit monitoring.  All the big-6 banks have these services (at Scotiabank it is called InfoAlerts).

We also have these two free services monitoring our credit.

• Credit Karma https://www.creditkarma.ca/
  • Free to use.
  • Provides alerts by email.
  • Does not create a ‘hard pull’ on your credit (no impact on credit score).
  • Is a good source for your detailed TransUnion credit report. 
  • The credit score you see is not the Beacon Score that Banks and Mortgage Brokers see, but it is close enough to tell you how lenders will view your credit in general terms.
  • You can login anytime to review your full credit report, and you can drill down to the details of each item on your credit report.

• Borrowell https://app.borrowell.com/#/public/login
  • Free to use.
  • Does not create a ‘hard pull’ on your credit (no impact on credit score).
  • Is a good source for your detailed Equifax credit report.
  • The credit score you see is not the Beacon Score that Banks and Mortgage Brokers see, but it is close enough to tell you how lenders will view your credit in general terms.
  • You can login anytime to review your full credit report, and you can drill down to the details of each item on your credit report.