PRBC, a bill payment credit bureau, has announced that its credit verification, reporting and scoring procedures meet or exceed new guidance provided by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) for verifying "bill payment" histories and establishing credit scores for borrowers with little or no traditional credit files or FICO scores.   » Continue Reading

Experian and Credit Builders Alliance (CBA) have announced the launch of a data-reporting partnership that enables CBA's members to report microloan repayment data to Experian to help thousands of small business entrepreneurs build a credit history.   » Continue Reading

In an article titled The Credit Rating in Your Shoe Box, Ben Levisohn and Brian Burnsed write for Business Week about Pay Rent, Build Credit (PRBC). "They've captured the attention of lenders right now who want growth in new markets [like the unbanked]," says Michael Turner of Political & Economic Research Council (PERC), a public policy group.

Equifax has announced that it has agreed to acquire a 28 percent equity stake in Global Payments Credit Services LLC (GPCS), a credit information company in Russia, from Global Payments Europe, s.r.o., a subsidiary of Global Payments Inc., and Home Credit and Finance Bank of Russia (Home Credit).   » Continue Reading

TransUnion has published its analysis of trends in the credit card lending industry during the 4th quarter of 2007 - making it available on TransUnion.com. The company says this report is the first in a planned series of quarterly consumer lending sector analyses that TransUnion will publish on the site.   » Continue Reading

Experian has announced the launch of Emerging Credit Score, a new credit scoring tool developed with eBureau designed to assist lenders in evaluating the creditworthiness of unbanked and underbanked consumers.   » Continue Reading

Billeo and Payment Reporting Builds Credit (PRBC), an alternative credit bureau that collects, reports and scores rental and bill payment data, have announced that they are working together to enable consumers to build credit by doing what they do each month – pay their recurring bills on time.   » Continue Reading

The Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released a new discussion paper titled "Alternative Data and Its Use in Credit Scoring Thin- and No-File Consumers" .   » Continue Reading

Experian( has announced it has filed a lawsuit against LifeLock, Inc. "for allegedly placing fraud alerts illegally on credit files maintained by Experian."   » Continue Reading

TransUnion and Edgar, Dunn & Company have announced the Revolver Model, "the second scoring model to identify predictive credit behavior characteristics using survey-based data from the PaymentDynamics 2007 Preferred Payments Study. The Revolver Model helps financial institutions determine how consumers prefer to manage their credit card balances and enables banks to develop custom marketing offers accordingly."   » Continue Reading

Fair Isaac and Associacao Comercial de Sao Paulo (ACSP), one of the largest credit bureaus in Brazil, have announced ACSP’s launch of Global FICO Score for Brazilian businesses - saying that "the launch of this innovative consumer credit-risk score makes Brazil the first South American nation to access Fair Isaac’s global-standard FICO credit risk scoring technology."   » Continue Reading

Experian has announced that it will offer "the option to freeze credit reports to consumers nationwide. Beginning Nov. 1, Experian will allow any consumer across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories to place a freeze on their credit report. A credit file freeze prevents new creditors from accessing the credit file without the consumer's consent."   » Continue Reading

TransUnion has announced that effective October 15, 2007, it will offer what it its calling "the credit reporting industry's first complete file freeze solution" - providing U.S. consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia with the ability to freeze their credit files, should they feel that step is warranted.   » Continue Reading

Online Banking Report's latest issue titled "The Market for Fraud Protection, Identity Theft, and Credit Monitoring Services" recommends that "the time is right for ALL financial institutions to add identity protection/monitoring to their online offerings. The service has been optimized for Web delivery; it provides clear user benefits; it’s relatively easy to implement, and it can directly contribute to the bottom line in real, fee-based dollars, not nebulous intangibles.”

Leslie McFadden of Bankrate.com interviews Evan Hendricks, the author of "Credit Scores & Credit Reports: How the System Really Works, What You Can Do", about his concerns with the credit reporting system in the US.

Last week, in testimony before the US House Financial Services Committee, Sandra Braunstein, Director, Division of Consumer and Community Affairs of The Federal Reserve Board, provided a deep look at consumer credit reports in the US. The Committee was looking into issues associated with errors in credit reports and how consumers can get the errors corrected.

Bloomberg reports that Experian has agreed to buy a majority stake in Brazil's Serasa, that country's largest credit bureau.

In an article titled 'Credit Bureaus Fight Consumer-Ordered Freezes", Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz write for USA Today about the Consumer Data Industry Association and its efforts on behalf of the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) to slow legislative efforts at the state level regarding laws that enable consumers to freeze access to their credit histories. They write that "by far the best protection against new-account fraud is a credit freeze, say credit consultants and fraud investigators. A credit freeze bars the credit bureaus from issuing your credit report — the summary of loans and payments that forms the basis of your credit score."

Alan Wirzbicki writes for the Boston Globe about comments made at yesterday's House Financial Services Committee meeting by chairman Rep. Barney Frank who said "the federal government was not moving quickly enough to regulate the consumer credit bureaus and opened the possibility of new legislation later this year." A webcast archive of the hearing along with copies of the prepared testimony is available on the Committee's web site.

Today, the US House Committee on Financial Services is holding a hearing titled "Credit Reports: Consumers’ Ability to Dispute and Change Inaccurate Information" to "examine factors that continue to contribute to inaccurate consumer credit reports and evaluate the adequacy of the consumer dispute process under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). In addition, the Committee will hear recommendations for improving the process and efforts that furnishers, credit bureaus and the regulators are taking to improve the accuracy of credit report information and will review the status of key rule makings and studies mandated by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA) related to the accuracy of information furnished to consumer reporting agencies and the adequacy of the dispute resolution process."

Peter Hull writes for the Charleston (SC) Post and Courier about how "most insurers, including State Farm, Allstate and S.C. Farm Bureau, routinely use [consumer] credit scores to assess risk when issuing or renewing policies."

Brian O'Conner writes for the Detroit News about a recent change by local utility DTE Energy who began "reporting the payment histories of all 2.5 million customers to the major credit bureaus in August." The impact on consumers missing a bill payment due date has been significant - O'Conner cites an example of one consumer whose "late DTE payment knocked his all-important credit score down by 100 points -- and pushed the interest rate on his new mortgage up."

Beth Healy writes for the Boston Globe about credit bureau data quality issues and just how irritating they can be for consumers. Healy reports that US Rep. Barney Frank, who becomes chairman this week of the House Financial Services Committee, plans to hold hearings early this year to look into the problems.

CompuCredit has announced it is "joining with the alternative credit bureau PRBC in an innovative program to help consumers build credit by reporting consumers' positive payment history that is neither received nor reported by other credit bureaus."   » Continue Reading

Eric Dash reports for the New York Times on the money being made by companies offering identity theft protection services to US consumers. Dash reports that "fear of identity theft has helped give rise to a nearly billion-dollar business in credit-monitoring services sold by the major credit bureaus."

China's People's Daily Online reports on the Credit Information System Bureau run by the People's Bank of China containing the "credit histories of 530 million people and tens of thousands enterprises". Begun in January 2006, "the central data base keeps track of people's bill payment histories on loans and credit cards, as well as taxes, mortgage and utility payments."

The Center for Financial Services Innovation has announced publication of two new papers on alternative credit data. The first, "Market Interest in Alternative Data Sources and Credit Scoring" (PDF) by Katy Jacob and Rachel Schneider, investigates the potential interest in alternative data on the lender side, by interviewing senior lending officers and other key decision-makers at 23 major financial institutions. The second, "Accessing Credit: The Role of Private Loan Services for Underbanked Clients and Prospects at CircleLending" (PDF) by Katy Jacob and Helen Payne Watt, surveys users of CircleLending's pioneering process to formalize and automate private person-to-person loans, to better understand why customers chose this credit option, and how it effected their behavior.   » Continue Reading

Pay Rent, Build Credit, Inc. has announced that "the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted Patent Number 7,139,734 for the company's technology and method for collecting data on commonly recurring bill payments made by individuals and small businesses, and incorporating them in a credit file, credit report, and credit score. Examples of common monthly payments that go largely unreported to traditional credit bureaus include rent, private mortgages, non-prime auto loans, utilities, phone, cable, insurance premiums, pay day advances, and rental furniture and appliances."   » Continue Reading

Experian Consumer Direct has announced the results of a recent National Score Index study showing a 16.9 percent decline from 2001 to 2006 in the rate at which consumers are opening new credit accounts and a 12.6 percent rate at which late payments of 90 days or more are increasing. The national average credit score is 675 -- 7 points lower from 2001 when it was 682.   » Continue Reading

PRBC, also known as Pay Rent, Build Credit, Inc., has announced that it has "completed a round of equity financing that will enable it to expand its business as the leading "alternative credit bureau" in the United States."   » Continue Reading

TransUnion has announced that it has joined Utica College’s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection (CIMIP), a research collaborative composed of elite public and private sector organizations, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Secret Service, LexisNexis, IBM and three prominent universities. The organization is dedicated to using applied research to further a national research agenda on identity management, information sharing and data protection.   » Continue Reading

Experian-Scorex has announced its Global Bureau Scoring Solutions suite that enables lenders and credit bureaus to enrich their data and turn it into more powerful customer intelligence. The suite is comprised of four distinct components: Smart Start Bureau Scores, Global Bureau Gateway, Global Portfolio Quality Assessment and Value-Added Bureau Solutions.   » Continue Reading

The London Sunday Times profiles Experian and its CEO Don Robert. "Robert is bringing Experian, the huge American credit-checking and business-services group that he heads, to England and a flotation next month on the London Stock Exchange."

Tresa Baidas reports for The National Law Journal on a growing number of lawsuits being filed by consumers against the nation's three major credit bureaus.   » Continue Reading

Pete Bach writes for the (Appleton, Wis.) Post-Crescent about the right way and the wrong way to cancel credit cards while protecting your credit score. For example, experts caution against canceling longstanding cards with solid pay-on-time histories that do better for your credit score than a brand new one.

TransUnion has announced it is acquiring Qsent, a Beaverton, Ore.-based provider of contact and identity management services that support customer acquisition and retention, collections and recovery and identity resolution applications.   » Continue Reading

Damon Darlin reports for the New York Times on VantageScore, the recently introduced alternative to the long-standing FICO scores produced by Fair Isaac. According to the three credit bureaus that created VantageScore - Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, it improves risk prediction of future credit performance by weighing more factors. VantageScore also reportedly is more accurate at assessing consumers with "thin files" - having a short credit history.

Experian has announced that VantageScore from Experian is now available to consumers.   » Continue Reading

TransUnion has announced RentBridge, a new patent-pending rental payment database that will gather and maintain rental payment history information to help apartment owners, property managers and other types of credit grantors make more informed risk, fraud and identity management, collections and marketing decisions.   » Continue Reading

TransUnion has announced Turnkey Triggers, "a new service that assists marketers in reaching prospective customers within hours of learning about changes to their credit profile that may predict newfound responsiveness to a targeted firm offer."   » Continue Reading

Bruce Mohl writes for the Boston Globe that "Verizon Communications Inc. has begun reporting to the nation's three credit bureaus which Massachusetts customers pay their bills on time and which ones don't, a practice a company spokesman described as ''a free gift to the public." Apparently "Verizon is the first telecommunications company to submit monthly payment data."

SunTrust Bank has announced a free identity theft protection and credit-monitoring program from Equifax, "becoming the first major bank in the nation to provide Equifax Credit Watch Silver protection for free to select personal checking clients."   » Continue Reading

Equifax and PayPal have announced a new credit alert program that provides PayPal account holders in the United States with free monitoring of their credit records. Through this relationship, PayPal users receive free early warnings alerting them to activity on their Equifax credit report.   » Continue Reading

Kelly Spors reports for the Wall St. Journal on how slip-ups on financial matters as a young person can have financial consequences that last a long time by impacting the person's credit score.

Advantage Credit has announced some results from a recent teleconference it hosted to explore the new VantageScore, a new consumer credit score jointly developed and introduced recently by Experian, TransUnion and Equifax.   » Continue Reading

The federal financial institution regulatory agencies and the Federal Trade Commission have jointly issued for comment an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on section 312 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act).   » Continue Reading

Michelle Singletary writes for the Washington Post about VantageScore, the new credit scoring system last week announced by the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.   » Continue Reading

Damon Darlin reports for the New York Times on lobbying efforts by the three major credit bureaus to add language to pending federal legislation that would pre-empt various state laws that enable consumers in some states to lock the information in their credit reports. As concerns about identity theft have grown among consumers, legislators in some states have passed laws that provide the locking (or "freezing") capability to their constituents.   » Continue Reading

Experian has announced the launch of Credit Migration Solutions providing credit grantors a new solution that analyzes the credit behavior of customers and prospects to make acquisition, portfolio management and collections decisions.   » Continue Reading

The nation's three consumer credit reporting companies -- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion -- have jointly announced the introduction of a new credit score called VantageScore they say will simplify and enhance the credit process for both consumers and credit grantors.   » Continue Reading

Sonja Ryst writes for Business Week about her personal experience getting worried about a potential identity theft and what she learned about putting a freeze on her credit file at the three major credit bureaus.

Kenneth Harney reports for the Washington Post about how mortgage lenders are sharing loan application information with the credit bureaus - who then make it available to other third parties.   » Continue Reading

Frederick Stakelbeck writes for Asia Times on the opportunity for a national credit bureau in China.   » Continue Reading

San Francisco Consumer Action has released the results of its 2005 Credit Card Survey (PDF) focusing on the use of universal default by card issuers to increase interest rates on revolving balances based upon changes in their credit profile as reported monthly to the issuers by credit bureaus.   » Continue Reading

Pamela Yip reports for the Dallas Morning News on credit bureaus and the credit reporting industry.   » Continue Reading

Robert Bruss reports for the Boston Globe on his experience with getting current credit reports and FICO scores from the three major credit bureaus.   » Continue Reading

Kenneth Harney reports in the Boston Herald on more of the story regarding credit bureau scores and card issuer reporting of credit limit information.   » Continue Reading

Kenneth Harney writes in today's San Francisco Chronicle about the problems that can result from some credit card issuers not reporting information to the major credit bureaus.   » Continue Reading

The US Public Interest Research Group has issued a white paper on errors in consumer credit reports. It concludes that 25% of credit reports it surveyed contained serious errors that could result in the denial of credit and that 79% of the credit reports surveyed contained either serious errors or other mistakes of some kind. The paper is available online (PDF).

A report from India's Financial Express on the launch of Cibil, Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd., India's first credit bureau.

India's Business Standard reports on the Indian credit bureau negative file system being built by the MasterCard-led India Cooperation Committee.   » Continue Reading