Will a missed payment affect your Credit Rating?

Yes, a missed payment on a mortgage, loan or credit card will adversely affect your credit rating. However, it may be possible to mitigate the adverse credit rating affect. Firstly, on realising you have missed a payment, contact your bank and make sure the payment is paid. Secondly, write or speak to the bank, explaining why your payment is late. Maybe there was a problem with the post; alternatively there could have been some misunderstanding on the due date. If you explain your circumstances the banks may be more generous than you expect and write it off as a mistake. However, there is only a certain number of times you can get away with this. If you repeatedly miss payments they will stop accepting excuses about delays in the post.

Also, it is worth bearing in mind, that if it is only a few days late many financial institutions will not let it count against you,

If you do miss a payment it can count against you for upto 6 years. If you have only one missed payment, it will be unlikely to stop you getting most loans. However, if you have a history of missed payments then it will become increasingly difficult to get loans. As a consequence, you may end up only able to get high interest bearing loans from adverse credit specialists.

Related:

• Top 10 Tips to improve your credit rating
• Adverse Credit Mortgages