KEY POINTS:
A Swedish resident, in New Zealand for barely a month, has been forced to resign a company directorship and may have missed out on a job offer because of a bad credit rating that proved to be incorrect.
Credit reporting agency Veda Advantage says 60-year-old Ian Courtney Hall,
who emigrated from Sweden to be near his New Zealand-resident children, shares a birthday with another Ian Hall.
The aggrieved Mr Hall was a director of his daughter Cecilia's company, Au Pair Link, a service matching Swedish au pairs with New Zealand families.
When Au Pair Link recently applied for a business loan it was turned down - on the grounds of the newly arrived Mr Hall's supposed un-creditworthiness.
It turns out the second Mr Hall's file had previous credit inquiries and a couple of defaults marked on it.
Veda Advantage country manager John Roberts said because Mr Hall from Sweden had supplied only his first and last names and date of birth, the two files were electronically matched when the ANZ Bank credit checked Au Pair's directors.
The information about the bad credit instantly adjusted one of the bank's decisioning fields, and the loan application was declined.
"It literally is just one of those really weird, really unusual things that can happen," Mr Roberts said.
Originally British-born but a Swedish resident for 37 years, Mr Hall has been less than impressed with the New Zealand system. He has had to resign as a director so Au Pair can get the loan.
"To start up a new life in New Zealand at my age is not really that easy. And then to come here and to be treated in this way by this company is unforgivable. I'm very worried and angry."
Mr Hall believed the mix-up had also cost him a job opportunity. He said one company which had been very interested in him had failed to get back in contact.
"I'm wondering whether they've done a kind of credit check on me and found out that I have no credit worthiness, and therefore they've just struck me off their shortlist of applicants."
Following Herald inquiries, Veda Advantage has now apologised to Mr Hall and removed the adverse credit information from his file.
Mr Roberts said it had also put an alert on his file, meaning if any future inquiries were made, Veda would verify its accuracy.
Swedish-born Ms Hall said the confusion over her father's credit record had delayed her business loan by some weeks. She said she was shocked by the New Zealand system.
"Do not most developed countries have personal ID numbers for their citizens? Should not New Zealand follow this order?"
It's a point she and Mr Roberts agree on.
"The only way you can ever protect [against] this happening in New Zealand is for people to have unique identifiers," she said. Mr Roberts said Veda Advantage was in favour of personal identification numbers.
But Barry Wilson, president of the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties, said identification numbers could still be stolen, and they did not solve the problem of human error.
He said it was also wrong that credit agencies could make a claim about a person based simply on the assertion of a third party, without having to check it out.
"What should be required is a series of very strict protocols to prove the person alleged to owe the money does in fact owe it."
Meanwhile Mr Hall is just glad to have the phantom bad credit record removed.
