I'm in the UK, which is part of Europe, and we do have to build credit here. Permission to rent, in the nicer places, is contingent on credit ratings, and so i

I'm in the UK, which is part of Europe, and we do have to build credit here. Permission to rent, in the nicer places, is contingent on credit ratings, and so is the interest rate you will be charged for a mortgage, as well as getting access to one at all. So it affects access to housing, and is quite important. (Unfortunately the credit reference agencies maintain files with a lot of credit-harming errors in them. Sometimes even fictitious, unpaid/overdue transactions will appear, in fictitious credit accounts. Even obtaining a new phone contract can harm your credit rating temporarily - it affected mine a lot when I took out 3 new data SIM contracts. I think most people don't check their files, but they should, and then correct the harmful errors.) I think the housing dependency on credit rating in the UK has become considerably more onerous in recent years, since the "credit crunch". According to a bank I spoke with, it also affects whether you can be a director of a company, because banks want to know the directors of any company that holds a business account with them, and they can decline to provide account services if a director has a sufficiently poor credit record.