Now i could have taken this and run with it, my attitude clearly doesnt stink, I was correcting information that was given incorrectly to the OP. I may have been a little sarcastic in my first reply, but its pretty clear i was informing you that lenders DO use the score.
You said the scores are overrated, implying as well that just because the credit agencies dont lend money that the score doesnt mean much. You then followed up by saying that the score is NOT used by lenders.
Application and behavioural score cards are sets of rules and characteristics that are compiled together that applications are scored against by lenders to determine credit worthiness and to underpin the decision to lend.
Hopefully this clears up that scores are use and do mean something.
It depends on the lender, I have worked in agreeing loans and mortgages since 2006, 5 mortgage lenders and one car finance.
With the car finance they didn't look at the credit scores at all, they did Experian consumer searches (so the same score you would see as general public logging on) but this was completely ignored, every single application was manually searched and assessed and that one one of the larger car finance companies in the UK.
First mortgage lender which doesn't exist anymore after 2008 used internal scoring, you are probably correct in the fact that the Equifax/Experian (would have been one of the two or both it was many years ago now) had some bearing on that one.
Second mortgage lender was completely manual, credit score was ignored.
Third mortgage lender as above.
Forth was score based, but the system didn't look at the credit scores, it would assess the credit Vs criteria automatically. So for example, if the criteria at the time was 3 missed payments on a credit card was acceptable, it would accept someone who had 3 or less, reject more than 3. It would do this across all the various types/agreements. There were also a whole ton of other triggers and scoring criteria that was but in but not based on any credit score, as such.
5th lender that I am working for now use a bit of both, it uses Equifax, and only Equifax and uses the MGILF 04 score, which I dont believe, is the same score Jo public would see if they logged on and credit searched themselves.
It then does the same as above with the various credit agreements although the scoring system is pretty basic after that, and most are manually checked.
Further to that, with every lender without exception, every loan or mortgage that would potentially be agreed was manually checked, the scoring system would only kick out at DIP ( decision in principal) or AIP (agreement in principle) without it ever seeing a human, and even then if your application was declined automatically at the first stage, you could call in to get this double checked, infact, I'm not 100% sure but I think this is part of regulation that a lender must do this if requested.
To summarise though, I do think those credit scores people see when they log on to check themselves are very much marketing ******** and borderline missleading, the credit reference agencies use it to make money, and may or may not have any bearing at all to whether they be agreed finance.
Particularly when I was working at the car finance place we would have a laugh at that Experian consumer score because it often got it very wrong. It was also very harsh against people with little credit, people get concerned about lack of credit but provided you are on the voters roll which helps traceability, as a human assessing these things lack of credit isn't a detriment, it just shows someone didn't need to borrow money, that isn't a bad thing. It really depends on the overall circumstances which is something a credit sesrch alone simply cannot assess. That's why you have humans looking at these things.
It all depends on the lender though, I am not saying that some lenders don't assess based on those consumer scores, because I have not worked at every lender in the UK, I've no doubt that many of the really big ones probably do, because they can afford to take a hit on the irregularities that credit searches and scores sometimes bring back that a human will catch.
