anonymoose said:
Alright, thank you.
To all the people who already landed in Canada a while ago:
Did you face any issues due to the missing credit history?
Like, when renting an apartment, getting a phone contract etc.?
Did any of you buy a house yet?
How long did you have to wait before getting approved for that?
Unfortunately I cannot be of much help to your other questions, as I have not gone through these processes yet myself.
However, I can most definitively say that credit history is simply NOT transferable due to each country having their own FINANCIAL LAWS and these are not interchangeable (NOT EVEN FROM THE U.S., which has the most similar financial structure to Canada - even the Credit bureaus in Canada are American companies for cryin' out loud - Equifax and Trans Union).
Even though I had an excellent credit history of 20+ years, and FICO score of 790 in the US, I had to start from scratch in Canada
. Your best bet is to obtain a secured credit card, or get a credit card from one of the banks that gives a "credit card for new immigrants". It will be a small initial limit, but it is at least a place to start.
Once you start using that card responsibly for about 2 to 3 years, your credit will become strong and you can then get pretty much anything you want - credit wise.
Also an additional note on credit history (being a Mortgage Broker and having dealt with credit and credit histories all my life I know a thing or two about these things). Some of the above responses seem to confuse "credit history" with one's history with a particular lender or bank! These are 2 DIFFERENT things.
A Credit history is a profile of you that a CREDIT BUREAU maintains that is available to anyone who accesses it (with your permission, of course). It is NOT TRANSFERABLE!!
Banks like HSBC (where I also have an account both in the US and Canada) will be willing to USE your history
with them in another country, to extend credit to you (like a Mortgage or loan) based on THEIR experience with you. But, for that to happen you would need to have had an account and a credit product with them (like a credit card or loan) for a long time in the other country.
In some very limited cases, I was told that some banks in Canada will be willing to access your United States credit history to offer you things like a mortgage. But this is rare, and the particular bank you are dealing with must be willing (and more importantly have the infrastructure to access the US credit report). This is only limited to the US. Not any other country.
