Glossary
Credit score
A number summarising your credit file: how reliably you've handled credit so far. Higher scores generally open access to more lenders and better pricing.
By Leverage Finance · Updated 17 July 2026
Each bureau calculates a score from your file, typically on a scale up to 1,000. It moves with your behaviour: on-time repayments build it, missed payments and defaults pull it down, and old negative marks fade as they age off the file.
Scores matter for refinancing because lenders price the person in front of them today. If your score has climbed since you took the original loan (a year or two of clean repayments does real work), a new lender may assess you more favourably than the original one did. That gap is what a refinance goes looking for.
See Does refinancing hurt your credit score? for how the process itself touches your score.
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