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Summary
Credit
bureaus are companies that collect information
from various sources and provides consumer
credit information on individual consumers
for a variety of uses. The reports paint a
picture on a borrower's debt, rental and bill
paying habits. This helps lenders assess credit
worthiness, the ability to pay back a loan,
and can affect the interest rate and other
terms of a loan. Interest rates are not the
same for everyone, but instead can be based
on risk-based pricing, a form of price discrimination
based on the different expected risks of different
borrowers, as set out in their credit rating.
Consumers with poor credit repayment histories
or court adjudicated debt obligations like
tax liens or bankruptcies will pay a higher
annual interest rate than consumers who don't
have these factors.n.
Details
of Credit Bureaus
In the United States,
the legal term for a credit bureau under the
federal Fair Credit Reporting
Act (FCRA) is consumer reporting agency
— often abbreviated in the industry as
CRA.
- Key credit bureau consumer
protections and general rules or governing
guidelines for both the credit bureaus and
data furnishers are the federal Fair
Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Fair and
Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA),
Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA), and Regulation
B.
- Two government bodies
share responsibility for the oversight of
credit bureaus:. The Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) has oversight for the consumer credit
bureaus. The Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency (OCC) charters, regulates,
and supervises all national banks with regard
to the data they furnish credit bureaus.
- Most consumer credit
information is collected and kept by the
4 national credit reporting agencies: Experian,
Equifax, TransUnion, and Innovis (newer
company). These organizations are for-profit
businesses and possess no government affiliation.
Each
of the 3 main credit bureaus issue their own
variation of a FICO Credit score.
More
Articles
More
Information
Here
is the law that dictates the permissible uses
of credit reports: http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra.htm#604
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