Why are credit reporters allowed to collect my information?

Credit reporters are a specific kind of agency who gather and share information about your past behaviour in order to help credit providers make responsible decisions about who they give credit to.

The actions of credit reporters are regulated by the Credit Reporting Privacy Code, which sets clear limits on what information credit reporters can collect, what they can use and disclose, when they can collect credit information and how long they can keep this information for.

Credit information is generally collected from publicly available publications, or provided by credit providers which have subscribed to the credit reporter.

Subscribers can generally provide information to credit reporters on the basis this has been authorised by the individual concerned (often terms and conditions of things like loans or credit cards will contain a provision which authorises this).

If you are concerned that an agency has disclosed information about you to a credit reporter without your consent, you should contact the agency in question and ask it to explain its basis for disclosing your information.

If you’re not satisfied with its response, you may also want to contact the credit reporter directly to discuss the information that is on your credit report.