The public answer is usually six years

Cifas says information on the National Fraud Database can be held for up to six years. That is the line most people eventually find, usually after a bank closure or failed application has already caused the immediate damage.

For many people, that six-year headline is the first reason the issue starts to feel urgent. Even when the marker is only discovered late, the idea of it sitting in the background for years changes how they think about banking, credit, insurance, and screening.

The clock is not the same as correctness

A record lasting up to six years does not tell you whether it was correctly filed in the first place. Duration and justification are different questions. A marker can be long-lasting and still wrong. That is why a dispute often turns first on evidence, category, and process, not on the calendar alone.

The practical takeaway is simple. If the record looks wrong, the useful question is not only 'When does it expire?' but also 'Should it be there at all?'

Not every Cifas record is an adverse fraud filing

Protective registrations sit in the same wider Cifas world but do a different job. They are intended to help consumers protect themselves against identity misuse. They should not be confused with an adverse fraud-risk filing by a member organisation.

That distinction matters because people sometimes search for marker duration before they have even worked out what kind of Cifas record they are dealing with.

What to do once the timing question is answered

Once you know that many adverse records can stay in place for up to six years, the next move is usually to get the record itself. That means requesting the Cifas data, identifying the institution that filed it, and reading the response carefully before deciding whether the next step is issuer complaint, escalation, or simply waiting the record out.

This is one of the reasons the duration page and the report-reading guides should sit close together. The timing answer helps frame the problem, but the record itself tells you what the dispute is really about.

Sources behind this guide

• Cifas consumer guidance on National Fraud Database retention
• Cifas guidance on protective registration