TransUnion is replacing its 0–710 consumer credit score with a wider 0–999 score, phased across its credit-monitoring partners from late September 2026 until June 2027. “Excellent” will start at 786 instead of 628, and every boundary moves. Your number will change, and for most people it will mean nothing — because no lender has ever seen it. What decides applications is the file underneath: payment history, limit usage, the electoral register, hard searches, defaults and judgments.
Below: what changes and when, the bands side by side, what sits on your file, how to fix it when it is wrong, and what moves in three, six and twelve months.
What TransUnion is actually changing
On 26 August 2026 TransUnion announced the launch of a next-generation expanded 0–999 consumer credit score in the UK, replacing the 0–710 range used until now. The new score “will roll out across credit monitoring partners on a phased implementation from late September 2026 until June 2027”.
The phasing matters. TransUnion says on its own site that it does not provide credit scores directly to UK consumers, working instead through more than 50 businesses that display the score in their own apps. So the date your number changes is set by whichever app you use, and for the next nine months two people checking “their TransUnion score” may be looking at two different scales.
What is not changing is the part that matters. TransUnion’s consumer page states that “the underlying information in your credit report remains the same”. Same accounts, same payment history, same defaults, same searches. This is a rescaling of a consumer-facing number, not a change to the data lenders receive.
The model has changed too. Its page on the new score says it now uses trended data alongside the snapshot: “Your score now looks at how you manage credit over time, not just at a single moment.” The press release names account balance changes and credit card usage patterns among the inputs, and adds more than 300 personalised educational messages — a product feature, not evidence of a better score.
The bands, old and new
TransUnion has published both sets of boundaries, so the comparison can be exact. The last two columns are ours: each band’s width as a share of the whole scale, counting both endpoints, so the old scale is 711 points wide and the new one 1,000.
| Old band | Old range (0–710) | Share of old scale | New band | New range (0–999) | Share of new scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excellent | 628–710 | 11.7% | Excellent | 786–999 | 21.4% |
| Good | 604–627 | 3.4% | Good | 653–785 | 13.3% |
| Fair | 566–603 | 5.3% | Fair | 563–652 | 9.0% |
| Poor | 551–565 | 2.1% | Low | 488–562 | 7.5% |
| Very poor | 0–550 | 77.5% | Very low | 0–487 | 48.8% |
The bottom row is the one to stare at. “Very poor” swallowed 551 of the old scale’s 711 points, 77.5 per cent of the range, so a badly damaged file and no file at all landed in the same bucket. The new bottom band covers 488 of 1,000 points, 48.8 per cent, while “Excellent” almost doubles its share, from 11.7 to 21.4 per cent.
The new scale gives TransUnion more room to separate people at the weak end. It does not make anyone more creditworthy. One point was 0.14 per cent of the old range; one point is 0.10 per cent of the new one. A 30-point move on the new scale means less than it did on the old.
Your number will move, and mean nothing
There is no conversion sum, because TransUnion changed the model as well as the ruler. Its support pages say scores may change because “the way the score is calculated has been refined to give a more complete and balanced view”. Someone at 610 on the old scale — just inside “Good” — could land anywhere in the new 653–785 band, or outside it, and nothing published lets you predict which. Between now and June 2027, do not read a jump or a fall as information about your creditworthiness. Note the date your app switched scales, and read the report, not the number.
The score is not the thing lenders see
Its support pages state: “No, your new credit score will not determine whether you will be accepted or rejected for credit.” The new-score page adds that “lenders assess the information in your credit report itself, not the score you see” and that “the score is simply a helpful guide for you; it does not influence decisions on applications you’ve already made”. That is the company selling the score telling you lenders do not buy it.
James Robinson, TransUnion’s Managing Director of Consumer Interactive, said at launch that “there is still significant confusion among consumers about what credit scores mean, with many believing the score they see is the same one used by lenders”. The Financial Conduct Authority’s Credit Information Market Study, final report 5 December 2023, found the same: “a general lack of awareness and understanding of credit information among consumers”.
What happens when you apply: the lender pulls your file, runs it through its own scorecard built on its own customers and losses, adds what it already knows if you bank there, assesses affordability, then applies policy rules involving no score at all — minimum income, residency, time since a bankruptcy. Two lenders can read one file and give opposite answers, which is why choosing the right card for your circumstances beats chasing a number.
Three agencies, three scales
Experian got there first. A press release dated 3 November 2025 announced a score running 0–1250 in place of the old 0–999, reaching all UK customers by year end and adding rental payments, phone contract payments, overdraft usage and cash advances to the inputs. Experian’s page on the 1250 score gives the bands as Excellent 1121–1250, Very Good 1001–1120, Good 861–1000, Fair 641–860 and Low 0–640.
Equifax runs a different scale again. Its credit score pages describe a score out of 1,000, free and updated monthly on the Equifax Basic tier alongside your statutory report, or £14.95 a month after a 30-day trial for a daily-refreshed version. We could not find published numeric band boundaries for the Equifax score on its own site, so we are not going to state any.
So the three headline numbers top out at 1,250, 1,000 and 999, with no conversion between them: a 780 from one agency tells you nothing about a 780 from another. The files differ too, because not every lender reports to every agency. MoneyHelper names four agencies you can check free — Experian, Equifax, TransUnion and Crediva — and recommends checking all of them before any application.
What is actually on the file
TransUnion’s own list of what feeds the score is short: “your financial account performance history, public records such as judgments, bankruptcies, and insolvencies, your outstanding debt levels, credit limit usage and whether you’re registered on the electoral register”. The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance Credit explained adds the rest: live, closed and defaulted accounts, public records, searches, financial associations, CIFAS fraud markers and “gone away” information. Note what is absent — your salary, your savings, your job title and, in most cases, your rent.
Payment history and what it leaves behind
Payment history is the first item on TransUnion’s list of what feeds the score, and missed payments leave the longest marks — though no agency publishes the weight it gives each factor. The ICO guidance says a defaulted account “may show on your credit reference file for six years from the date of the default”. Paying does not remove it; it is marked satisfied and runs its six years anyway — worth knowing before you pay a collector expecting it to vanish.
Update timing catches people out too. TransUnion says your report “is only updated when lenders, banks, utility providers, public bodies and data providers submit new data”, and that it can take four to six weeks for a change to be reflected. So fix the file first, then allow two reporting cycles before you apply.
Balances and credit limit usage
TransUnion names both “outstanding debt levels” and “credit limit usage” as factors but publishes no threshold. You will read everywhere that utilisation should stay under 30 per cent; that figure appears nowhere in TransUnion’s published list. Treat it as a sensible habit, not a rule with a number behind it.
Two things follow. Because the file moves only when a provider submits new data, the balance recorded against a card is the one submitted on that provider’s reporting date — a snapshot, not the lowest point you reached. And since utilisation is balance divided by limit, closing an unused card cuts your total limit and can push utilisation up — close cards for security or fee reasons, not to tidy a number. If you are carrying balances, work out the real cost and payoff date with our credit card payoff calculator first.
The electoral register
Registering to vote is one of the few quick wins, and it is on TransUnion’s list. GOV.UK confirms why: the full electoral register may be used for checking applications for loans or credit, and you cannot opt out of it unless registered anonymously. The open register — the version anyone can buy — is different: opting out affects neither your vote nor the register lenders check.
Searches, hard and soft
Every credit application leaves a hard search other lenders can see, and retention differs by agency — another reason the files are not interchangeable. The ICO guidance records that Experian and Equifax keep search records for one year, with debt-collection searches held for two, while TransUnion keeps them for two years; TransUnion’s own site says “credit searches usually remain on your credit report for two years”.
Eligibility checkers, quotation searches and looking at your own report are soft searches: invisible to other lenders and harmless. The damage comes from clustering real applications: several hard searches in a few weeks reads as someone being refused repeatedly.
Defaults, CCJs and the one-month rule
If a county court judgment has just been entered against you in England or Wales, act on this paragraph today. GOV.UK states that records of judgments are kept for 6 years unless you pay the full amount within a month. Pay in full inside one calendar month and it comes off the public register entirely rather than sitting there six years marked satisfied.
The rule exists across the UK under different names. Registry Trust, which maintains the public registers, says Scottish decrees stay for six years unless recalled, dismissed, paid before the court action, or “paid in full within one calendar month from the date of decree” — in which case, on proof of payment, it removes the decree and tells the credit reference agencies. Northern Ireland judgments likewise stay six years unless cancelled or set aside, with the same one-month removal. After that window, paying gets the entry marked satisfied but does not remove it.
Financial associations
A joint account or joint application creates a financial association, and a lender searching you can see and weigh the linked person’s file. Ending the relationship does not end the link: once no joint credit remains, ask each agency to break it, then check that it did.
Get all of it, free
You do not need a subscription. The right of access is free and agencies must respond within one calendar month; TransUnion offers its statutory report free, and MoneyHelper lists free routes to all four agencies.
Then read them properly. Look for accounts you do not recognise, which is how fraud shows up first; addresses that were never yours; the date of any default, because that date and not the date you paid starts the six-year clock; and satisfied judgments not marked satisfied. An error corrected at one agency is not corrected at the others.
When it is wrong: dispute, then notice of correction
Two organisations can be responsible for a wrong entry. The ICO’s guidance for the public explains that if the entry carries a company’s name it is likely that company’s responsibility, and that agencies “cannot amend this data without the permission of that company”; agencies own only what they generate themselves, such as financial links and linked addresses. So write to both. The ICO says an agency must respond within 28 days of your letter about a disputed entry and the lender has one calendar month; MoneyHelper says the process “shouldn’t take longer than 28 days”, with the entry flagged as disputed meanwhile.
Where the entry is accurate but the story behind it is not, you have a notice of correction: a statement of up to 200 words that you write yourself, attached to the entry and seen by anyone who looks. It does not change your score, and it can slow applications, because a person has to read it instead of a machine processing you automatically. Worth it for a genuine explanation — a hospital admission, a bereavement, a disputed final bill; not to air a grievance.
If a regulated lender will not budge, complain to the firm and then escalate. The Financial Ombudsman Service gives most businesses up to 8 weeks to respond, 15 days for payment services and fraud, and you then have 6 months from the final response letter to bring it in. It is free and you do not need a claims company. If the problem is how an agency itself handles your data, that goes to the ICO.
Ignore the number. Read the file.
Pull your free statutory report from all four UK agencies this week, then fix what is wrong before you apply for anything.
Explore GetSmartSaver →What moves the needle in 3, 6 and 12 months
Most of this is slow, and nothing you do this week shows up this week. Updates can take four to six weeks to show, so a change made today lands next month at the earliest and needs a second cycle to look like a pattern.
Three months
- Correct errors. The only fast, large change available. A default that is not yours, or a judgment against a previous occupant, can come off the file entirely.
- Register to vote at your current address if you are not on the full register.
- Bring balances down and hold them down for at least two reporting cycles, so the file shows a level, not a dip.
- Stop applying. Soft-search eligibility checks only, and space out anything leaving a hard search.
- Break dead financial associations once no joint credit remains.
Six months
By six months a run of on-time payments across everything reported reads as a pattern, not a good month. If your file is thin rather than damaged, a small, sensibly used account starts to help; our guide to credit builder cards covers the type. Use one for a single small recurring purchase and clear it in full every month — the rates are punitive, so carrying a balance defeats the point.
Twelve months
At a year, hard searches drop off the Experian and Equifax files, though they stay on TransUnion’s for another twelve months, and a full year of clean payments changes how a file reads. If the goal is a mortgage, the decision rests on affordability and the file, not any consumer score — our guide to how much you can borrow on a mortgage sets out what lenders test.
What does not work
- Paying anyone to remove accurate adverse data. It cannot be done.
- Hunting for a “credit blacklist”. There is not one. There is your file, and each lender’s own policy.
- Optimising for one agency’s number. You do not know which agency your lender uses.
What the regulator is doing about it
The FCA’s market study also found poor data coverage and quality between participants. The follow-through is consultation paper CP26/7, published 25 February 2026, which proposes designating certain credit reference agencies and imposing a mandatory reporting requirement on credit and mortgage firms, so that a lender sharing data with one designated agency must share it with all. It also proposes making firms report satisfied judgments and decrees to the courts and Registry Trust.
Be precise about the status: this is a consultation, not law. It closed on 1 May 2026 and the FCA says it is considering responses. No policy statement has been published, and the consultation proposes any resulting rules take effect twelve months after one is. Nothing in it changes anything for you in September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What is TransUnion’s new credit score range?
TransUnion is moving UK consumers from a 0–710 score to a 0–999 score. The new bands are Excellent 786–999, Good 653–785, Fair 563–652, Low 488–562 and Very low 0–487. The old bands were Excellent 628–710, Good 604–627, Fair 566–603, Poor 551–565 and Very poor 0–550. The underlying credit report data is not changing.
When will I see the new TransUnion score?
TransUnion says the new score rolls out across its credit monitoring partners on a phased basis from late September 2026 until June 2027. Because TransUnion does not give scores directly to UK consumers and instead supplies more than 50 partner businesses, the date depends on which app you use. Some people will still see the old scale well into 2027.
Does a higher number on the new scale mean my credit has improved?
No. The scale is wider and the model behind it has changed, so numbers are not comparable across the switch. TransUnion says the way the score is calculated has been refined. Nothing about your accounts, payment history or public records changes on the day your app switches scales. Judge any real change by reading your credit report, not by watching the number.
Do lenders see my TransUnion credit score?
No. TransUnion states that your credit score will not determine whether you are accepted or rejected for credit, and that lenders assess the information in your credit report itself, not the score you see. Lenders run your file through their own scorecards, add their own customer data, affordability checks and policy rules. That is why two lenders can reach opposite decisions on one file.
Why is my Experian score so different from my TransUnion score?
Because they are different scales built from different data. Experian moved to a 0–1250 score in November 2025, Equifax scores out of 1,000, and TransUnion is moving to 0–999. There is no conversion between them. The files differ too, because not every lender reports to every agency, which is why MoneyHelper recommends checking all four UK agencies before you apply.
Can I get a CCJ removed from my credit file?
Only in specific circumstances. GOV.UK says records of judgments are kept for six years unless you pay the full amount within a month, in which case the judgment comes off the register entirely. The same one-month rule applies to Scottish decrees and Northern Ireland judgments on proof of payment to Registry Trust. After that, paying gets it marked satisfied but it still runs six years.
Last reviewed: September 2026. Credit reporting is UK-wide, so the changes here apply across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The court records that reach a file differ by jurisdiction — county court judgments in England and Wales, court decrees in Scotland, and judgments recorded on the Northern Ireland register maintained by Registry Trust — though all three run six years and carry the same one-calendar-month removal rule on full payment. Figures and rules come from TransUnion, Experian, Equifax, the ICO, GOV.UK, Registry Trust and the Financial Ombudsman Service, current at the time of writing; share-of-scale percentages are our own. This article is general information, not personal financial advice — check your own position, or get free help from MoneyHelper or Citizens Advice, before acting on it.
