Tommy has over 15 years experience within the insurance industry, and his primary focus is helping travellers find the right cover for their medical conditions.
Whether you’ve got a house purchase coming up or are just trying to be more conscious of your financial decisions, you might be monitoring your current credit score and trying to improve it.
As a part of this process, you might know that certain things can affect your credit score and be wondering whether comparing holiday insurance for pre-existing medical conditions with us might be one of those things that affect it.
Read on to find out all you need to know about whether applying for insurance affects your credit score.
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What is a credit score?
Each person has a credit score. It’s a three-digit number, typically between 300 and 850, which indicates to lenders your level of credit risk. In simple terms, it’s a score that indicates to those who might lend you money how likely you are to pay it back. Each lender will have different scales as to what they deem an acceptable credit score; however, the higher, the better.
There are things you can do to improve your credit score, such as registering on the electoral roll, paying bills on time, closing unused credit cards and more. Equally, there are things that can negatively affect your score, such as missing bill payments, applying for credit frequently and being close to maxing out credit, such as your overdraft or credit card limit.
You can also see a negative effect if you don’t borrow money, as lenders prefer to see someone who can reliably borrow money and pay it back to someone who has no history of borrowing money.
LEARN MORE: Travel Insurance Glossary and Jargon Buster
Will my credit score be affected by comparing quotes?
No, your credit score will not be affected by comparing travel quotes with Medical Travel Compared.
In fact, there is no occasion where getting an insurance quote would affect your credit score. It doesn’t matter if you search for just one comparison or a range of different comparisons and quotes; you won’t need to worry about it affecting your credit score as only a “soft search” is completed.
What is a soft search, and how does it work?
A soft search, or soft credit check, is a routine check on your credit file that doesn’t leave a permanent mark. When you are comparing travel insurance quotes, this type of search is used to confirm your identity rather than inform the quote generation process.
The check we do whilst generating insurance quotes for your trip is the same level of check that happens if you were to search your own credit report.
In contrast, a hard search, or hard credit check, does have the ability to lower your credit score. A hard search is conducted when you apply for some form of credit; this could be a credit card, mortgage or even a pay-monthly mobile phone contract.
The reason it might affect your credit score is that a lot of these applications in a short period of time can indicate that you might be in financial trouble or are relying on borrowing more than preferred.
Do insurance payments affect your credit score?
There is an occasion when your insurance will have an effect on your credit score, and that’s if you choose a monthly payment plan. If you do choose to opt for monthly payments, this will require a hard search which will leave a mark on your credit file. This is because a monthly payment plan is a form of lending.
When you’ve selected the policy for you from your selection of bespoke quotes, you’ll be transferred to the insurance provider of your choice to pay. The majority of providers we work with only offer one-off payment options; however, be mindful that a few might also offer the option to pay for your premium with monthly instalments, and if you are working on building your credit score, you may wish to opt away from this.
Alternatively, if you do have a monthly payment plan in place and consistently pay reliably, this can help to improve your credit score. Making regular payments are a positive sign to other lenders, and if you’ve never had a monthly payment plan in place, using a monthly direct debit payment for your insurance premium might be beneficial to your credit score.
If you are looking for more information, you can find a wealth of articles in our travel insurance guide section. Alternatively, check out our travel blog.
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Once you have selected a policy from our results list, you will be directed to the chosen insurer's payment platform. Here you can make payment with a credit or debit card. We can also make payment to the insurer on your behalf by taking payment details over the phone. Cheque or cash payments are not accepted.
It is really simple and quick to do! After you've told us about your trip details and answered some medical history questions you can add your pre-existing conditions, one by one, for each traveller. You'll only need to enter your details once, it's all online and there's no need to call, or provide details of your conditions in writing.