FREE & Easy Credit Score Check for Canadians | Borrowell Review
If you live in Canada, you know the importance of your credit score already. If you are new to Canada, you should really read our article on what is your credit score and a few tips to improve your score. TLDR; a credit score is massively important if you reside in Canada. Your ‘credit worthiness’ when it comes to getting a personal loan, a mortgage, or a credit card will be impacted by your credit score.
The first step towards improving your credit score is actually knowing what your credit score is. It is not something that your bank or some government body will give out to you every time you want to see it.
But fortunately, there are a few independent organizations in Canada that allow you to check your credit score online and for free.
A few prominent organizations that allow you to check your credit score in Canada are Borrowell, Credit Karma, Equifax, and TransUnion. Today, however, we are going to take a look at Borrowell, which I personally use.
What is Borrowell?
Borrowell is an online platform that allows Canadians to check their personal credit scores without a hard check on their credit report. A ‘hard check’ affects your credit score poorly and a ‘soft check’ does not have an impact on your credit score. So, Borrowell’s soft check is definitely very helpful.
Borrowell prides itself on being the first Canadian institute to provide free credit checks for its users. As of now, the platform hosts over a million users.
I myself have been using Borrowell to check my credit score every week for the last year. The website has always delivered what they promise–a free credit report without a hard check on your report.
Key selling points (benefits) of using Borrowell for Credit Reports
This list of benefits are extracted from their website and I can personally vouch for their legitimacy.
- Free weekly credit score and report monitoring
- Bank-level security with 256-bit encryption
- Personalized financial product recommendations
- Free credit improvement tips and education
- Checking your score with Borrowell won’t hurt it!
I will talk about a few of these key benefits that anyone who joins the platform will enjoy.
Join Borrowell for FREE Credit Score Reports Anytime
Free weekly credit score and report monitoring
Borrowell asks for some of your personal information (such as annual income, contact details, legal name, NO SIN required, birthday, etc.). Don’t worry to provide this information as these are used to identify you among the millions of Canadians using credit on a daily basis.
Once you sign-up with Borrowell and set up your account they will start monitoring your credit activity. They monitor your credit card activity, other credit facilities you have taken, and pretty much anything to do with credit under your name. All this is what goes into determining your credit score.
Every week, Borrowell will update your credit score and you can freely check it whenever you want to. Just login to your account with them and the updated score is there right in your face.
Businesses should make our lives easy. And Borrowell is a prime example of that.
Free credit improvement tips and education
Borrowell also gives you personalized tips on improving your credit score. This can be quite helpful if you have no idea how your credit score is calculated. They have AI-powered assistance that will take a look at your credit report and give you recommendations.
One of their main tips is to keep your credit card utilization below 30% of the total credit limit. This is hard. But can be done!
Borrowell also hosts a lot of articles that can help you understand how the entire credit system works in Canada and how you can adjust your lifestyle to be efficient about it.
Personalized financial product recommendations
Borrowell is completely free for its users. So how does Borrowell make money? This is where their personalized product recommendations come in handy for them and us.
Having analyzed your credit activity, Borrowell gives you recommendations on credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, banking services, and insurance. It works as a referral program where if we do apply for a suggested product, Borrowell gets a commission at no higher cost for the user.
Another helpful feature is that Borrowell tells you your chance of success with a loan or a credit card before you apply. So you can select ones with the highest chance of approval from dozens of recommendations.
But, there is no requirement as such that you should select these recommendations if you don’t need any. Borrowell will still continue to provide your credit score free.
Checking your score with Borrowell won’t hurt it!
This is quite important when you select a company to check your credit score. If you want to be on top of your creditworthiness, you have to check your credit score at least once a month. And if your inquiry leaves a ‘hard check’ on your credit report, you yourself will be sinking your credit score.
Companies that monitor credit scores consider ‘inquiries’ about your credit score as a red flag. Usually, when you apply for a new credit card or a loan, or a mortgage, the bank or the insurance company does a credit check to determine if you’re a safe investment. They will tweak certain features of the loan or mortgage based on your credit score. If your score is very bad, they can completely deny your request too.
So an inquiry on your credit score is a hint that you are looking for new credit facilities. Which can be considered a red flag. So, when a bank or an insurance company makes an inquiry on your credit score it leaves a ‘hard check’ on your report. If there are too many of these, your credit score can be negatively impacted.
Fortunately, on Borrowell, your credit score checks don’t count as ‘hard checks.’ They count as ‘soft checks’ which do not impact your credit score at all. This means you can check your credit score as much as you want.
Wrap-up
Borrowell is a Company that provides Canadians the ability to check their credit score free of charge. They are very easy to use and make tracking your credit score so much easier. As Canadians, there is no escape from credit for anybody. So might as well be equipped with the proper knowledge and tools to take control of your credit situation in a much better style. Borrowell is one of the best tools to help you in this journey.
Have you used Borrowell? Have you used another credit check organization? Let us know your experiences and questions in the comments below.
