> but it is good to know that it takes a year merely to qualify for a score. Technically it doesn't - banks leak your details to CRAs upon every major interact

> but it is good to know that it takes a year merely to qualify for a score. Technically it doesn't - banks leak your details to CRAs upon every major interaction (account application, etc) and regularly confirm them if they have a continued relationship with you (if you have an account open they'll typically report the status of the account every month). However other banks may still be suspicious of a brand new record and might want to wait a few months before trusting it (since if the record was created fraudulently, it will usually get discovered and rectified pretty early - if the record is there for a long time, either it's legit or the fraudster has done an above-average job). The "one year" number is purely arbitrary but feels fair to me, that's probably what I'd do if I was building such a system (though I'd also build an escape hatch to allow people to confirm identity differently without CRA scum being involved). Furthermore, in the UK there is no concept of "credit score". It's a myth perpetuated by the CRAs just so you obsess over that meaningless number that they can tweak every month to give you a reason to keep coming back and look at their "offers". In the UK, lenders get your raw report (aka identity, address history, recent credit applications and their status, open accounts, etc) and then make a decision internally based on their own algorithms.