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Comment by hyperman1 | Hacker News Reader

I always tought a credit score was an American ism, maybe including UK and Ireland for the EU. Does anyone know if there exists something like credit scores in Belgium, and how you find out what yours is?

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Many (most?) EU countries have credit score systems and/or companies, and the details on how they work differ on a country-by-country basis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score#By_country

In some countries credit score registries are restricted by law to only holding information on delinquent debt, so an average person has no entries in the credit score registries. This is the case here in Finland currently, though a national positive credit register is being planned for 2024 (https://www.vero.fi/en/positivecreditregister/).

You conclude that most EU countries have a credit score by linking to a Wikipedia article showing that almost none European country has a credit score?

It's not like the US system. It's a negative credit score meaning that you start as a good lender and then you can only fuck it up by not paying your bills.

In the US we have positive credit score meaning you have to show you are a good lender to get a better score.

The european ones are mostly much less granular.

> You conclude that most EU countries have a credit score by linking to a Wikipedia article showing that almost none European country has a credit score?

The Wikipedia article does not show that almost no European country has a credit score or credit reporting system. It simply provides examples from various countries and is obviously not exhaustive, like most lists in Wikipedia.

If you want to just see how many EU countries have any credit registries, these World Bank links have good data:

- Public registries: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.CRD.PUBL.ZS

- Private registries: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.CRD.PRVT.ZS

They show most EU countries have such registries. I did go through a dozen countries manually before finding the above handy links, though...

Of course one could argue whether or not those systems which only allow negative entries (and thus most people will have no data there) for a credit check should be considered credit score systems.

Credit registry =/= credit score system. You are moving the goal post here. Your previous assertion is just false. the US system is brutal, unfair and shouldn't be reproduced anywhere else in the world at first place.

I count 5 countries of the 27 eu countries in that list, and it seems half of them have a gov based system. So the situation seems different from the US.

I always get orwellian vibes from the US system. Some random big brotherish corporation looks at you in any way it can, then runs some completely untransparant system to produce an unreliable number, with no appeal. That number determines your chances in life.

Then again, my governement keeps track of how well I do on repaying my loans and tells that to lending orgs. I assume someone with a US style 'gubberment' thought process might recoil in horror even if I rather like it.

The craziest thing about the US system is that you have to use credit (and pay it back punctually) as opposed to debit just in order to convince future creditors that you're a good customer. Migrants to the US can run into a Kafkaesque situation where they need a credit score to get a credit card, but they need a credit card to accumulate a credit score first...

Does this really happen? I migrated to the US and had no problem getting a CC. The limit was low, just a few Ks at first, but it gave me a chance to start building credit record.

It certainly does, depending of course on where you migrated from. Someone from a first world country and who has established assets is going to be in an easier position than someone who doesn't. And unfortunately, in this country credit isn't really an option, everything from potential landlords to employers can use it against you.

It's especially crazy because in most of Europe I am pretty sure a mere possession of a credit card is correlated with being more likely to get into financial trouble.

I never had a credit card. Among my friends who do well financially most don't have a credit card or just got it because their bank offered a crippled debit card that wasn't accepted at hotels and car rental. They never use the credit line. On the other have out of the financially irresponsible people I know most have multiple credit cards and use them as a credit line in regular basis.

Most people around here only have a credit card to deal with USA focused internet shops. I never used the credit possibilities of mine, felt worried when using it, and cancelled it when iDeal etc became more common on the net.

Can confirm your experience. Although in my circles credit cards are more common due to kickbacks - big discounts at places you'd normally go to anyway, or straight up financial incentives. Everyone prefers debit however, and credit cards are definitely not the norm.

Credit Unions usually offer secured credit cards as an onramp. Put $500 in a special savings account, get a credit card with a $400 line.

They'll also let you get a secured loan for something you were planning to pay for in cash (e.g. a car), but instead you dump that cash into an account which automatically pays down the loan balance every month. I did it. The interest rate for the loan was a fraction of a percent higher than the interest on the account.

It's monumentally stupid, though, and says nothing about my ability to pay off future debt.

It says you're able to manage your cash flow well enough that you were never tempted to prioritize something else over the repayment, for months, probably years at a time.

IMO that says a lot about your willingness to pay off future debt.

Most big banks offer secured credit cards too, they are ubiquitous.

If you already have an Amex card from your country of origin, Amex will get you one based on the score of your country of origin, or at least that is what I had heard

Say what you want about FICO scores, they are a lot of things, but they are not "completely untransparant," FICO tells you exactly what makes up the score:

https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/whats-in-your-credit...

>payment history (35%), amounts owed (30%), length of credit history (15%), new credit (10%) and credit mix (10%).

Certainly not most, given your own list. Remember there are 27 countries in the UE and UK isn't one of them.

In Germany, there is SCHUFA, which is a credit score.

To rent in Germany, I had to have a SCHUFA check and a letter from my previous landlord saying I didn't have any outstanding debts, the "Mietschuldenfreiheitsbescheinigung."

Germany is like a proto-US.

Ignore the media spin, it's the most capitalist country in Europe, where unequal contracts rule supreme and you get fines and prison time for nearly anything.

I'm surprised the socialist policies stuck around, although there's still time to get rid of them.

> where contracts rule supreme

What, other than a contract that complies with the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, should be more supreme between two parties freely trading with each other?

The weather report? A poem?

Somehow you replied before my edit. I meant unequal contracts, where one party has more power and the other is screwed if they, for whatever reason, cannot fulfill it.

Which is to say, most contracts.

The requirements and punishment for breach of contract are rather nutty even compared to the US.

I don't get the media spin in the UK. I don't expect Germany to be anything other than capitalist, or as they say "ordoliberal", which is a market with strong state regulation.

Considering their socialist policies started with Bismarck, I think they'll remain. But I think perhaps US-centric media somewhat over-eggs "socialist Europe".

That's a weird take, meaningful fines are rare, except for parking/speeding tickets (because it's an easy way for cities to get cash), prison is very rare, you have to really go for the large crimes to not get probation. The one exception is coercive detention ("Beugehaft"), which they hand out instead of fines. It's a dumb concept, but it's also not that common.

I also generally disagree that Germany is capitalist. Most markets are heavily regulated and full of subsidies, taxes are extremely high, and there's a fundamental mistrust of individualism.

Oh that's good then. If I ever live in a country where, say, stoning people to death is legal I'll be happy knowing that it's "rare".

Police beating up innocents also happens rarely in the US.

Fines are neither extrajudicial nor cruel and unusual. It's in everyone's interest for you to pay a fine if you don't file your taxes than for you to receive a prison sentence.

Again, it's rare. The state is financed via very high taxes in Germany, not by abusing fines as a money grab. Some local admins get overzealous with speeding + parking violations, but even that is pretty cheap. And what's the alternative? Would you prefer your car to be towed and your license invalidated? Paying 20€ is cheaper for everyone involved ... and if you're really allergic to paying money and the picture isn't perfect, you can usually get out of it by claiming "that person could be anyone".

Yeah, but "negative" credit score (ie. the only information they store is whether you have been a "bad" customer) is different from the US-style credit score system.

> Mietschuldenfreiheitsbescheinigung

Also, that must be the most German word ever.

Funnily enough, despite the advertising, there really is no such thing as a Credit 'Score' in the UK.

Lenders get information about you from a Credit Reference Agency and will have their own internal systems to make decisions based on that. You can ask the reference agency for a copy of your credit report.

The three "score" sites are partnered - and possibly funded - by Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.

The "scores" are only loosely related to actual credit ratings, which are somewhat context/application dependent.

In reality the sites are mostly just marketing fronts for various consumer services - credit cards, loans, mobile and energy contracts, and so on.

They're notoriously aggressive about getting you to log in and keep checking your score. Partly because this looks good for partner engagement metrics, but also because it trains you to keep checking your score in an obsessive and gamified way.

I briefly worked in that space for my first job; a small company that would essentially resell you your own credit report for a 'not insignificant" monthly subscription.

The TV advertising for credit score checking was just about to start around then as far as I could tell.

In Sweden it is common for companies to check on income and payment records before accepting purchase orders. Income data is provided by the tax authorities while payment records are available through the enforcement agency (state bailiff, "Kronofogden"). If your income is deemed to be too low or you have a derelict payment on record (these records are in place for 3 years after the payment has been completed) you will be denied credit in which case you'll have to pay up-front.

But this is more like based on government data rather than, I know this is very American, private data shared by companies (and usually handled badly, whether in cybersecurity or identity correlation terms).

Also, a credit checking association boasted that their members' data is 95% accurate - so that means that around 15 million Americans do have devastating errors on their credit score (through no fault of their own).

The data comes from governmental institutions but the actual checking is done by private companies like UC [1] and Ratsit [2].

[1] https://www.uc.se/

[2] https://www.ratsit.se/

Specifically for Belgium there is the CKP, which keeps track of all loans, including how timely they are paid, and which credit providers have to consult before granting any loan or line of credit.

https://www.nbb.be/nl/kredietcentrales/centrale-voor-krediet...

They also keep a black list of people who should be denied credit.

so, in Belgium there is no creepy credit score, but a public registry.

That's a more intelligent solution to the problem, like in the rest of Europe.

Finland only has a negative credit system (basically a record of payment delinquencies) but there are plans to introduce a positive credit system similar to the US.

Would you happen to have a source or link to an article mentioning about this?

Current private negative registries:

- https://www.asiakastieto.fi/web/en/about-us/about-credit-dat...

- https://www.dnb.com/fi-fi/tuotteet/bisnode-risk-guardian/ (Finnish only)

Current legislation: https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2007/20070527 (Finnish and Swedish only, Google translate of Swedish text: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=se&tl=en&u=https:/... )

I'm not aware of a good English page describing the current system in detail, though. The Finnish pages of e.g. the Asiakastieto registry are more detailed.

Planned positive public registry: https://www.vero.fi/en/positivecreditregister/

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