Geoff Holden

My big news this week was that I (finally) got my new car. It’s a sly (grey) Pontiac Solstice, with ebony leather interior. Pretty close to fully loaded; it has everything except XM, OnStar, the smoker’s package, acoustic headliner, and automatic transmission (and who’d want that?). It’s a very nice ride, but I have to get used to the thumbs-up’s and approving nods that I get from other drivers.

The one thing I don’t understand is why credit ratings don’t carry over from country to country. Since I came down to the United States, I’m essentially starting with a blank slate as far as credit is concerned, even after years of using credit responsibly in Canada. I guess if I had bad credit in Canada, I’d appreciate this chance to start over, but that’s not the case.

I fail to see why they don’t carry over. At least in the US and Canada, the same companies run the checks (Equifax, etc.), why can’t they link the two? It dosen’t sound like a difficult problem from a technical point of view, so I can only assume that there’s some legal and/or political reason. It seems to me that linking the reports would be beneficial to both the applicants and to the parties granting the credit. The companies would like the extra information, and the applicants would like the information to be used. The only people who I could foresee taking issue with this are ones with bad credit, and if you’re moving to a different country to escape credit issues, you’ve got bigger problems.]]>