Credit Score Basics > How does the MoneySavingExpert Credit Club work?

How does the MoneySavingExpert Credit Club work?

Wollit Team2 minute read · Updated 30th June 2024

The MoneySavingExpert Credit Club (also called the MSE Credit Club) is a subscription offered by MoneySavingExpert that gives you free access to your credit score and credit report.

MSE used to use Experian data; however, it now relies on TransUnion since Experian no longer offers its full credit report for free.

This change means that users will now view their credit information from TransUnion instead of Experian. This is not a huge change – Experian is the larger and more used credit agency, but plenty of lenders rely on and report to TransUnion as well.

Besides this, the Credit Club also gives you insights into your affordability and eligibility so you can see which products you qualify for.

What are the benefits of joining the MSE Credit Club?

Joining the MoneySavingExpert (MSE) Credit Club offers some pretty good benefits:

Free access to your TransUnion credit report and score. This can help you understand how lenders perceive you based on your payment history, credit applications, and more.
Affordability score: The MSE Credit Club offers a unique Affordability Score that mimics how lenders assess your ability to afford a product by looking at things like income, existing debt payments, and other commitments.
Eligibility rating: This combines your credit score with the affordability score and tries to give you a sense of whether you’re actually eligible for different products.

In short, the MoneySavingExpert Credit Club is a free tool that you can use to check your credit score and report, get a better idea of how lenders see you, and check if you’re eligible for a loan or credit card.

What is the difference between the MSE Credit Club and other credit monitoring services?

The main difference between the MSE Credit Club and other credit monitoring services lies in what data source they use:

Experian offers free access to your Experian credit score. You’ll need to pay for the full credit report, although you can get a statutory (more basic) version of your Experian credit report for free as well.
ClearScore uses Equifax.
Credit Karma and MoneySuperMarket also use TransUnion.

Other than that, the MSE Credit Club also offers an Affordability Score that’s supposed to give you an idea of how lenders see you. However, ClearScore, Credit Karma, and MoneySuperMarket offer similar tools as well. We’re not sure the MSE Credit Club’s affordability tool is as unique as they claim.

Also, until recently, the MSE Credit Club did not have an app, while ClearScore and Credit Karma did. But now they just launched one, so that’s another difference that’s gone.

The MSE Credit Club app, however, is trying to be more special. It recently added ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot, to give auto-generated personalised answers to your questions. All of these answers are based on the MSE blogs and guides.

The MSE Credit Club app also has a new video live-streaming feature, which allows you to ask the founder, Martin Lewis, a question and get an answer directly from him. These events happen weekly, although we don’t know how easy it is to actually get Martin Lewis to answer a question. Presumably, many people join.

At the end of the day, whichever service you use is up to you. They all do pretty much the same things. The most important part is not checking your credit score but taking steps to improve it.

The good news is that now there are many apps that can help you build and improve credit. One such app is Wollit.

Wollit works by reporting a fixed-fee monthly subscription as a loan repayment to all credit reference agencies. This helps you build a history of timely debt repayments, which is the main factor that matters for your credit score. Checking your credit score is great, but if you’re looking for an app that can actually improve it, you might get more mileage from a credit-building app like Wollit.