Credit Reporting Service - the industry at a glance

This industry includes companies that provide commercial and consumer credit reporting services. The types of establishments that are involved in credit reporting services are consumer credit reporting bureaus, credit clearinghouses, credit bureaus and agencies, credit analysis services, and mercantile credit reporting bureaus. Credit reporting services are a main resource of credit information for both consumer and business markets. The credit reporting services have a number of companies operating nationally, however some offer specialized services related to a limited domain. One agency known to provide all the services is Dun and Bradstreet and credit bureaus like Equifax, Experian and Trans Union are known to dominate the industry in the entire USA. The three companies together have a contract with an independent company known as Fair Isaac that collates data and forms a credit score. The range of the credit score varies from 350 to 800, with anything above 620 is relatively good.

The other credit bureaus are owned or under contract with the above three nationalized credit bureaus and these agencies maintain records of credit of approximately more than 200 million Americans. Like the three, Dun and Bradstreet provide credit information of more than 10 million American businesses. Credit Reporting services is broadly distinguished into consumer credit services and mercantile credit services.

The credit data collected by the three major credit bureaus is not always consistent since creditors may report the data to only one or two of these bureaus. So the outcome of this is that once individual can have three different credit scores, a point to be noted is that the method of obtaining the scores is different for all the three bureaus. The credit score has a direct relation on the rate of interest the consumer is offered, in layman terms higher the credit score lower the interest and vice versa. According to a study of over 500,000 merged credit reports conducted in 2002 by the National Credit Reporting Association, 29 percent of all consumers had scores that ranged more than 50 points. iN order to maintain the accuracy of the credit reports, consumers can purchase their credit reports from the bureaus. Equifax reports cost $12.95 each while Trans Union reports cost $9 each.

One of the world's largest providers of business, commercial-credit, and business-marketing information services is Moody's Investor Services a sister concern of Dun & Bradstreet. To make it easier to obtain credit reports of mnost business Moody's Investor Services launched Duns Book that has information on over 20,000 businesses. Experian Information Solutions Inc as well holds a large stake in this industry, Experian was previously known as TRW Information Systems & Services. In November 1996, U.K.-based Great Universal Stores PLC purchased Experian for $1.7 billion; it maintains a database of some 780 million customers and had offices in 16 countries in 1999 with its headquarters in Orange, California, and Nottingham, England. Founded 1969, Trans Union LLC is the youngest of the nation's three largest consumer credit reporting services.

Sources:
1. http://www.allbusiness.com/business-services/consumer-credit-reporting-agencies/3778761-1.html