Good credit rating

Richard Neill thinks, like many, that he has a good credit rating, because he has nothing to hide - presumably no missed credit card or mortgage payments, no adverse court judgements, and the like.

This constitutes a bad credit rating as far as financial lenders are concerned, because they know in advance they cannot make any extra profit out of him thru late-payment and other penalty charges. To them, he is a dead-weight in their customer portofolio. That is why they want to know about him. They will never delete a record on the basis that it is "clean".