Credit Bureau

A credit bureau (also called a credit reporting company) receives, maintains, and provides information about each consumer's financial history and creditworthiness. There are three companies that dominate the financial reporting landscape: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. They have always operated completely separately until 2005 when all three bureaus announced a cooperative effort to coordinate their data encryption---a credit bureau agency commitment to safeguard consumer data and clarify reporting. Each one also participates on a new encryption task force to keep up with new technological methods. If a person has ever been the victim of identity theft, they can get a free financial report immediately. Each is working diligently to protect and prevent fraudulent use of the data.

Each office rates the creditworthiness of every consumer with a financial report. It begins with the first application for a charge account, a personal loan, insurance, or employment and continues for the rest of life. A record contains information about debts, payments, and any judgments against that person. The top three names to know are: Equifax Inc. which is headquartered in Atlanta but is a global network with employees in 12 countries in North America, Latin America and Europe; Experian, the largest credit bureau agency supporting clients in about 60 countries, and a subsidiary of GUS, a giant retail corporation; and TransUnion, based in Chicago, the smallest of the three. All make money every time a request comes in for data to be processed from its computers and used to verify personal, financial or property identity. All lending institutions use a credit bureau agency to verify creditworthiness. Deuteronomy 15:7 says "If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:"

Each department has provided a complex mathematical score that evaluates all the information in a file and discloses how likely a person is to default on any loan payment in the next few years. A high score from a credit bureau is good. Every 12 months, everyone is entitled to receive one free file disclosure from each credit bureau agency. A person can get them all at once to compare or spread out the reports to continually check for changes in rating and see a record of everyone who has gotten the consumer report, the contents of the revealed report, the information providers, and the information that the credit bureau has suppressed like insurance reviews and medical account information. Anyone can purchase their actual FICO score from each agency at any time. If a financial rating is based on faulty information, anyone can report a problem and even add a short explanation to the credit bureau if the problem is not resolved to personal satisfaction.

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