What is a Credit Reference Agency?

A Credit reference agency (credit reporting agency in the USA) is an organisation that collects and collates personal financial data on individuals, from financial institutions with which they have a relationship. The data are aggregated and the resulting information is made available on request to contributing companies for the purposes of credit assessment and credit scoring.

• Credit Bureau

Most, if not all, banks and other loan-giving organisations subscribe to one or more of these organisations to ensure the quality of their lending. This includes companies who sell goods or services on credit such as creditcard issuers, utility companies and store card issuers. Subscribing organisations are expected to provide relevant data to maintain the common data pool.

Credit reference agencies are bound by the Data Protection acts, which require that data relating to identifiable individuals must be accurate, relevant, held for a proper purpose and not out-of-date. Individuals have a legal right to access data held on them.

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. Experian handles its credit disputes in its "National Consumer Assistance Center" (NCAC) in Allen, Texas. It has its headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. Equifax subcontracts out most of its consumer relations. Telephone disputes or requests are diverted to a Canadian company/vendor named ICT. Mail disputes or requests sent to its Georgia post office boxes are opened by another vendor, Innasource, scanned to a computer file and then electronically sent to a subcontract vendor either in Montego Bay, Jamaica, or in the Philippines. Equifax is based in Atlanta. Trans Union handles its own disputes (currently). It does so either in Pennsylvania or in California. Trans Union is based in Chicago.

See also:
• Credit Card
• Credit Score
• Credit Risk
• Debt
• Identity theft

• 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 Reference Agency".