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Comment by notJim | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, as this is rather off-topic, but are you by any chance unfamiliar with credit scores because they don't exist in Australia? If so, how do lending institutions gauge your credit-worthiness, and how do you set expectations about the same? I am just curious how this works outside of the US.

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non-US perspective:

In the Netherlands we have the "Burea of Credit Registration" which registers most debts, storing:

    - amount
    - start date
    - expected end date
    - actual end date
    - type of credit
    - miscellaneous notes

If payments are missed or other difficulties develop the lender can contact the Bureau, which notes this information on file. This information is stored for up to 5 years after final payment.

Note that this only tracks loans to individuals with a duration longer than 3 months and over a certain minimum amount.

The basic idea is that everyone who has not failed to repay a loan is considered creditworthy, actual loans are based on the above info, income (plus certainty of employment) and collateral.

Thanks, that sounds basically the same as the credit reporting agencies here in the US (except maybe the thing you're talking about is government-run?)

Well, my impression was that in the US you need to establish some kind of credit history to get a good credit score. Whereas here it is normal for people with no credit history to get loans and mortgages.

This is going to sound terribly naive, but I don't know what we have here in Aus. I've got a mortgage, car loan and credit card, but the process for getting them was relatively mundane. I know if you sign up for a phone plan they do a "credit check" but I don't know what it involves. I assume we have something, but I've never had cause to think about it before

I wish I could be terribly naive too... =) Aus sounds amazing!

I know a guy, who was at a conference, and was told by a guy in banking that one of the credit scoring techniques for credit card applications was checking if the first and last letters of your family name are vowels.

The idea being that Nigerians usually have vowels on both ends of their family names.

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