Are you afraid that someone might steal your identity and take a loan or credit card? Well, a credit monitoring service can help to calm your nerves.
A credit monitoring service helps to keep track of any activity on your credit history. It monitors any changes or suspicious activities to your credit history and notifies you so that you can take action. For example, if a new credit card is applied for in your name, the credit report will show it and the credit monitoring service will alert you. If it is not you, then you can know it’s a scammer and take action.
From this, then you can see that credit monitoring is important. So, here are the six benefits you can get from subscribing to a credit monitoring service.
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Timely Alerts
Credit monitoring provides timely alerts for any activity or change to your credit history. This way, you can address the issue before it escalates. For example, if someone applied for a loan or credit card with your details, the credit monitoring will detect it quicker and alert you. The fraud would be caught before the credit card is used or loans are taken.
These timely alerts are also useful in case there is identity theft or the credit reporting agency makes a mistake. You can be alerted quickly and the issue rectified.
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Monitors Your Credit Score
You should keep track of your credit score since it’s helpful when you are taking a loan, mortgage, or credit card.
A credit monitoring service keeps track of your credit score and notifies you in case there are any changes. Credit tracking helps to maintain a positive credit score.
Usually, when you apply for credit, the creditors report to the credit reporting agencies. In the US, the credit reporting agencies are TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. Each of these agencies then prepares a credit report. So, your credit report is updated each time you take new credit, pay bills, file for bankruptcy, or miss payment.
A credit monitoring service notifies you if there are any changes to the credit report such as missed payments, hard inquiries (inquiries by a creditor if you intend to open a new credit account), high credit card balances, bankruptcies, change of name or address to your file and application of new loans. These changes affect your credit scores and when you get the updates, you can respond to them so that you can maintain good credit history.
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Helps To Detect Identity Theft
A credit monitoring service notices any changes to your credit report. Therefore, if there is a credit inquiry or a new credit account, it would detect. If it is not from you then it signals identity theft, which can be dealt with before it escalates.
To make the offer better, some credit monitoring services give their clients insurance coverage for the losses caused by identity theft.
Also, they search the dark web, scan court and criminal records to look for the clients’ personal information.
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Helps To Detect Inaccuracies
A credit reporting agency or a creditor can add incorrect information to your credit report. These can affect your credit scores.
Because the credit monitoring service keeps an eye on your credit report at all times, it can detect these errors and they can be rectified before they affect your credit score.
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Saves Time
Yes, you can monitor your credit report and credit score, but it is time-consuming.
You can access your credit report once per year from the three credit reporting agencies. This gives you the option to check your credit report for all the reporting agencies once per year. Alternatively, you can check a report from each agency every quarter.
Once you get the reports, you should compare them with the previous year’s, to see if there are any discrepancies. Unfortunately, you may not understand some items in the reports, which can cause you to dispute, a process that takes time.
However, credit monitoring does all that for you, saving you precious time. They get the reports, analyze them and check if there are any discrepancies. Also, they give constant updates on your credit report and credit scores, unlike the periodical you get if you do it yourself.
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You Can Customize Alerts
The credit monitoring service provides comprehensive information about your credit report. You get notifications and alerts each time there is a change. However, you may not need some of this information. That’s why they allow you to customize reports, alerts, and notifications to only receive the information you need.
For example, you can opt to receive notifications if there are suspicious activities such as new credit, hard inquiries or a suspicious transaction on your credit card. Also, you can get information on the best loan rates you can get with your credit scores.
Interesting Related Article: “What Is a Good Credit Score? How To Improve Your Credit Score?“