Credit Bureau

A credit bureau or Consumer Credit Reporting Agency aka CRA (U.S.), or credit reference agency (UK) is a company that provides credit information on individual borrowers. This helps lenders assess credit worthiness, the ability to pay back a loan, and can affect the interest rate they apply to loans. Interest rates are not the same for everyone but instead are based on risk-based pricing, a form of price discrimination based on the different expected costs of different borrowers, as set out in their credit rating.

The three main CRAs in the USA are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

CRAs are for-profit corporations that collect, organize, and store a consumer’s current and past debt payment record and other financial information such as collections, judgments, tax liens, bankruptcies, etc.

It is this personal financial history on an individual that they provide to their paying business clients via a credit report.

Their business clients include creditors, insurers, employers, landlords, collectors and also companies that solicit individuals via mailing lists or telemarketing schemes, etc.

CRAs are not government agencies. They do not make credit decisions nor do they offer recommendations to approve or deny your application. They are not collection agencies. CRAs simply provide information to their business clients (in particular, your credit report).

How does the CRA get the information, who furnishes it to them? Business clients who receive an individual's credit report from a CRA will also furnish an individual's payment information to the CRA. For example, Sears ( a business client) not only gets your Credit Report from the CRA, but also will furnish your payment information to them as well.

A company need not provide a benefit to the consumer to be a furnisher to the CRAs, an example of that is Collection Agent.
Why is there 3 CRAs, don’t they all have the same information? CRAs are in competition with each-other so you should know that the information on one Credit Report from one company will often differ from the information on another. This is because of business economics. The business working with the CRA needs to pay fees to be registered with that CRA, so a business may only register with one CRA if they are trying to save money. Thus, one CR may be and often is, quite different than the others.

Collection Agencies are notorious for only reporting to one CRA to save a money.

How does a person contact the CRA’s? Here are the addresses and phone numbers:
Equifax P.O. Box 740256, Atlanta, GA 30374 Phone: (800) 685-1111
Experian P.O. Box 949, Allen, TX 75013 Phone: (888) (397-3742)
TransUnion P.O. Box 1000 Chester, PA 19022 Phone: (800) 916-8800
What laws govern the CRAs? After intense pressure and thousands of consumer complaints by the American people, Congress enacted the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) to protect the consumer from abuse by the CRAs, recently (2003) the FCRA has been amended to include the FACT Act (FACTA) which provides addition consumer protection. The FACTA amendment notably enables the consumer to challenge information provided by the Furnishers of information to the CRAs, giving the consumer additional legal power to correct information on their CRs.

In the United States, the legal term for a credit bureau under the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is consumer reporting agency.
Most credit history information is collected and kept by the three national credit bureaus, Experian (which purchased the files and other assets of TRW), Equifax, and TransUnion. These organizations are for-profit entities and possess no governmental affiliation.

Innovis is another consumer reporting agency. Widely viewed as irrelevant by most businesses and consumers. Starting out as ACB Services in 1970 by Associated Credit Bureaus, in 1989 it was purchased and renamed Consumers Credit Associates (CCA) and began to gain commitments from major credit grantors to contribute data. In 1997, First Data Corporation (FDC) purchased CCA and renamed this division Innovis Data Solutions, Inc. In April of 1999, CBC Companies purchased Innovis Data Services from First Data Corporation.

PRBC (Pay Rent, Build Credit, Inc.) is a national alternative credit bureau. Widely viewed as irrelevant by most businesses and consumers. Incorporated in March of 2002, PRBC enables consumers to self-enroll and build a positive credit file by reporting their on-time payments (such as rent, utilities, cable, and phone) that are not automatically reported to the three traditional credit bureaus.

See also:
• Credit Bureau
• Credit Card
• Credit Score
• Credit Risk
• Debt
• Identity theft
• Experian
• TransUnion

• Tips For Getting Your First Credit Card

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Credit Bureau".