Does Having More Than 1 or 2 Bank Accounts Affect Your Credit Score?

A person's credit score is an estimate, made by financial services firms called credit reporting bureaus, of a person's creditworthiness -- the likelihood that he will pay back any money that is loaned to him. The higher a person's credit score, the better a lending risk he is. Credit scores are calculated using a wide variety of data related to a person's credit history, but any information related to bank accounts is not included.

Credit Reports

The information in a person's credit report relates directly to a person's previous history of taking out money. It includes a list of all loans and lines of credit that have been reported to the credit reporting bureau, as well as whether the person paid these loans back and, if so, whether he did it on time. These reports do not list bank accounts, such as checking and savings accounts.

Checking Accounts

While the size of a checking account may suggest whether a person is able to pay back a loan, it does not appear on a person's credit report as it does not involve the borrowing of money. Therefore, because it is not listed on a person's credit report, a credit reporting bureau will not use any information about how many bank accounts a person has to determine his credit score.

Loans

While having multiple bank accounts will not directly affect a person's credit score, it does not mean that lenders won't take this information into consideration when making a loan to the person. Lenders commonly use credit scores to determine a person's creditworthiness, but they also use other information, too, such as his income and savings. While multiple bank accounts will not directly affect a person's creditworthiness in the eyes of a lender, the amount of money in the accounts might.

Considerations

The only way that a checking or savings account could affect a person's credit score would be if the account holder ran up a negative balance on the account and did not pay it off. Theoretically, the bank could report this debt to a credit reporting bureau. Unpaid debts bring a person's score down. However, unless these accounts became negative, multiple banks accounts would remain unknown to credit reporting bureaus.