Tag Archives: credit bureaus

Posted on

Incorrect Address Lowers Woman’s Experian Score 80 Points

Of all the things that go into a credit score, a discrepancy in mailing address often gets overlooked. It’s important that your address be correct, current, and consistent among all 3 of the major credit bureaus. The Guardian features one woman’s story of what happened due to a lag in public records:

I have no skeletons in my financial cupboard so was surprised to see that in April my Experian rating had dropped from “excellent” to “good” – a massive fall of 80 points. It appeared that Experian had never received details of my address at the time. It explained this was down to the way the local authority updated its electoral roll.

Posted on

Facebook Developing Own Credit Scoring Model

Score based on credit scores of your friends

There’s a bit of conventional wisdom floating around that each of us is the average of his five closest friends. The point, I suppose, is that we are influenced by those we spend time with. Either that, or we choose to associate with those most like us. Either way, we are judged by the company we keep, and that is not an altogether unfair way of judging.

Taking this to the extreme, Facebook has announced it has created a new credit scoring model based on friends.

Posted on

New York City Bans Credit Checks for Job Seekers

From CNN Money:

Job seekers in New York City can now rest assured that their credit history won’t impact their employment prospects. The New York City Council passed legislation that bans most employers from discriminating against job applicants and current workers based on credit history.

This is an interesting development for a few reasons. First, the original intent of credit scoring was to identify a borrower’s chances of defaulting on the loan. Under the law, companies were really only supposed to be able to check your credit score for the purpose of extending you credit (i. e. loaning you money). Now of course, credit checks are used for everything from apartment leases to job applications.

Posted on

Credit Bureaus Change the Way They Handle Disputes

Big news out of the New York Attorney General’s office. From CNN:

Experian (EXPGF), Equifax (EFX) and TransUnion, the three main agencies that track your credit, have agreed to follow new guidelines to handle disputes on your reports, according to a settlement announced Monday by the New York Attorney General.

This is huge news. Disputing information on credit reports is a big part of credit repair, and if you’ve ever gone through it, you know it can be frustrating to watch the credit bureaus acting in seemingly incomprehensible ways to simple requests like “this account isn’t mine; please delete it.”

It’s not clear at the moment how this will affect people in other states, if at all. The settlement could prompt action from other states’ attorneys general in a piecemeal fashion. The feds could even get involved in the form of the CFPB.