Category: Credit Reporting

  • Who Do You Want to Believe — Equifax or the U.S. Census?

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    The Chicago Tribune is running a Reuters story describing a study from Equifax that student loan write-offs totaled $3 billion in the first quarter of 2013. It's an impressive study. According to the story, "Equifax analyzes data from more than 500 million consumers to track financial trends."

    Yes, according to the article, Equifax has managed to find about 184 million more people than the U.S. Census says are living in the United States. The credit reporting companies appear to throw around the "500 million" figure as their global reach, not their U.S. database. Does anybody bother to do any reporting anymore?

  • Facebook & Credit Scores

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    From the February 9th Economist:

    Some firms piece together scores by analysing applicants’ online social networks. Professional contacts on LinkedIn are especially revealing of an applicant’s “character and capacity” to repay, says Navin Bathija, the founder of Neo, a start-up that assesses the creditworthiness of car-loan applicants. Neo’s software helps determine if applicants’ claimed jobs are real by looking, with permission, at the number and nature of LinkedIn connections to co-workers. . . .

    Neo’s efforts to improve accuracy include recording borrowers’ Facebook data: Mr Bathija reckons that within a year there will be enough evidence to determine if making racist comments on Facebook is correlated with a lack of creditworthiness.

    Racists? Sure, let's jack up their borrowing costs. But, if linking to cat videos on Facebook is correlated with a lack of creditworthiness, people are going to get upset.

    The article is worth a read as it shows where we might be heading with Big Data and credit scoring. Regulation does and undoubtedly will play a major role in drawing boundary lines around what data can be used in credit scoring. But, where Big Data offers competitive advantages, companies will seek it out. It will be tough to get the genie back in the bottle once the horses have left the barn.

    H/t to Frank Venis.

  • Two very Important FTC Studies, One on Credit Reports and One on Debt Buyers

    Posted by

    Nathalie Martin

    A recent FTC study of errors in credit reports is getting a lot of press. According to the most recent in a number of studies of the accuracy of credit reports, about 5% of U.S. consumers have an error on their credit report that is serious enough to increase their cost of credit. Although the credit industry is arguing that this is a small percentage (and I agree that this is a lot smaller than I expected), the head of the FTC does not consider it small. "These are eye-opening numbers for American consumers," said Howard Shelanski, director of the FTC's Bureau of Economics. "The results of this first-of-its-kind study make it clear that consumers should check their credit reports regularly. If they don't, they are potentially putting their pocketbooks at risk." The industry quickly noted that the errors in the other 95% do not affect people’s credit.

    (more…)

  • MyConsumerTips.info

    Posted by

    Amy Schmitz

    I have been working for a few years in developing and creating a consumer outreach website at MyConsumerTips.info.  The site is purely non-profit and has no sponsors or advertisers. It aims to simply provide consumers with “consumer tips” that change each day, independent summaries regarding debt-related and other consumer rights, quizzes and polls regarding such issues, and other consumer protection resources. It is user-friendly and interactive. This is part of my larger “Consumer Empowerment”service and experiential learning projects, and outreach endeavors.

    Unfortunately, it is tough to gain traction for such non-profit sites without paying for promotions through Google or others. Also, there so many sites that purport to provide consumer resources that individuals suffer information overload and are not sure what to trust.

    Hopefully, MyConsumerTips.info will deservedly gain trust, do some good and expand in ways that benefit consumers!  Check it out.

  • Hey Dude, What’s Your E-score

    Posted by

    Nathalie Martin

    Following on to my Acxiom story last week,  check out yesterday’s NYT story on e-scores.  The e-score is a private digitized ranking of consumers in the range of 0 to 99 that tells marketers your full socio- economic status, including your occupation, salary, and home value. It also reports on your distinct spending habits, such as the percentage of income spent on luxury goods, hotels, etc. Supposedly, the algorithm perfectly predicts spending and obviously knows more about us than we do. I’d like to know mine actually, but they are not available to us. The e-score process is entirely nontransparent and obviously not regulated.

    Perhaps this is not news or even new, but it is interesting. The data are used to know to whom to spam, er..market, and also to know to whom to send the really great deals (the wealthier people, dud..) and to whom to send the ads for subprime loans, vocational and for-profit universities, payday loans, etc.

    Customer service also differs for different scores. For example if a high-scoring person calls a credit card company, the person is directed to an elite agent, while the poor schmoes at the bottom get sent to an overseas call center. The same system is used to determine which insurance products to offer to whom.

    (more…)

  • Credit for Parenthood (in the Wall Street Journal)

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Wall Street Journal Reporter Jessica Silver-Greenberg casts a spotlight on the market for fertility treatment loans – including loans that enable the purchase of other women's eggs  - in the article "In Vitro a Fertile Niche for Lenders."  (subscription required). Perhaps this will prompt some coverage of the adoption loan market, which also has very interesting not-for-profit lending options; the direct financial price of the credit may be low but some complicated strings are attached. My earlier efforts to broadly evaluate the impact of loans in these markets are here and here. 

  • Keeping Up with the Joneses: Credit Score Edition

    Posted by

    Katie Porter

    Do you have good credit? Compared to whom? While your credit price may depend largely on how your credit fares against objective criteria (above 680 to avoid being "subprime," for example), do you ever wonder how you are doing compared to everyone else? Maybe you think the national banks would give credit to a ham sandwich; what you want to know if whether you are  keeping up with the Jones in managing your financial behavior.

    Experian provides a chance to test your credit against your neighbors with its National Score Index. (Hat tip to Harvard student Mazen Elfakhani for letting me know about this). Using this tool, you type in your zip code and out pops the "score index," the average credit score based on a representative sample of consumers, for the nation, region, state, and your area. You also get comparable figures on other credit statistics like debt, late payments, and credit inquiries.

    The areas are pretty broadly defined, like "Boston area," so you can't really see how you compare to the Jones family on your street. But it's still kind of fun, especially for someone like me who seems to move all the time. This year, Cambridge, MA: 715 score; last year, El Cerrito, CA: 708; prior years, Iowa City: 721. How am I doing? That will have to wait for another blog post; I'm definitely not paying Experian for my credit score.Remember that what you are entitled to one time per year for free is your credit report, not your score. That site: www.annualcreditreport.com, and as the FTC explains, there are lot of imposter sites and efforts to get people to pay for their credit scores when they are only trying to access the free report.

  • Foreclosures in Violation of the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act

    Posted by

    Adam Levitin

    A few months ago, after the robosigning scandal broke, the banks assured us that they had done a thorough review of their foreclosure processes and everything was in order.  I seem to recall JPMorgan Chase's CEO Jaime Dimon stating in an Oct. 13, 2010 earnings call, "for the most part by the time you get to the end of the process we're not evicting people who deserve to stay in their house." Thus, by mid-fall, the banks had sounded the all clear sign, and said it was safe to go back in the waters. 

    And yet now we learn that JPMorgan Chase has been engaged in wide-scale violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, including overcharging active duty military members on their mortgages and wrongfully foreclosing on their homes.  That's a lot of egg on JPM's face right now.  I guess, given the scope of JPMorgan's foreclosures, Dimon's "for the most part" statement is true, but it hardly instills confidence that our foreclosure process is working properly.

    Banking is a business based on trust, and the farther we go down the foreclosuregate rabbit hole, the harder it becomes to believe the banks.  How many times are we going to keep believing the "there's nothing to see here folks" line?  Can we trust Jaime Dimon when he tells us that the situation is under control?  What happens to our financial institutions when they lose their credibility with the public?

    Footnote:  anyone want to specultate on whether JPM as a servicer is liable for FDCPA violations? How about FCRA?

  • Let’s Stop Praying to the Credit Score

    Posted by

    Nathalie Martin

    Mortgage brokers, and those hoping to buy homes, are disgusted by the preeminence of the credit score in “scoring” a home loan today. According to an article, in Friday’s New York Times, this overemphasis on credit scoring in the home mortgage market is not helping the economic recovery either, because people just cannot qualify for a home. Some people’s scores have decreased even though they have done nothing differently. The author’s interesting article recounts many mistakes in his own credit report, a common phenomenon as it turns out.  The author is so disgusted he thinks the CFPB ought to take up credit reporting and scoring as a high priority once it is up and running.

    I agree that this is a shame, all this focus on credit scoring in lending, but I also think consumers can whip themselves into a frenzy over these scores, even when they do not want, need, or plan to use future credit. Always remember what the score is for, to qualify for more credit. Staying out of debt is as good a strategy as any for keeping the score high. Students acquire more credit cards than they need in order to get three open items.  Before they know it, their scores are lower because they cannot pay. I know a terminally ill woman, with no job and no intention to take on any more credit.  She wants to keep paying dribs and drabs on her enormous medical debts to protect her score until the end. Why?  I hate to give these scores, and the agencies that create them, more power over us than they deserve.

  • Wanted: People with Good Credit for Low-Paying Jobs

    Posted by

    Katie Porter

    Despite the increased proportion of Americans who are behind on their mortgages or have lost their houses to foreclosure, the practice of doing credit checks on prospective employees continues to climb sharply in popularity. The Society of Human Resources Management’s recent survey found that 60 percent of employers run credit checks on at least some job applicants; back in that “healthy” economy of 2006, the comparable figure was 42 percent. The growth in credit checks by employers is some evidence to counter arguments that the stigma of financial distress, bankruptcy, or foreclosure is falling as more and more Americans struggle to meet their debt obligations. Employers seem to be taking the opposite tact, with the weak labor market permitting them to be increasingly selective about whom to hire. Credit checks are a fast and cheap way to screen out candidates. And one in 8 employers checks the credit of every applicant for every job–meaning that people like janitors and retail workers can suffer employment discrimination on the basis of their credit.

    (more…)