National credit reporting agencies

Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are three national credit reporting agencies. These bureaus or credit reporting agencies provide credit information on individual borrowers. These agencies can also help the lenders assess the credit worthiness of an individual or his or her ability to pay back the loan. These three main credit-reporting agencies are corporations that work for profit and are responsible for collecting, organizing and storing the current and past debt payment history of a person. They also provide other financial information like judgments, collections, bankruptcies and tax liens.

The business clients of these national credit reporting agencies include insurers, employers, collectors, landlord, creditors and companies that solicit individuals through telemarketing schemes or via mailing lists. If you are wondering from where these national credit reporting agencies get the information from, then you need to know that business clients who receive the credit report of an individual from a credit reporting agency also furnish the payment information of an individual.

CRA are not government agencies and they are not responsible for making credit decisions and they not even offer any recommendations to deny or approve someone’s application. They are merely collection agencies and have nothing much to do besides providing information. After the intense pressure from the complaints made by Americans, the Congress enacted the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) to protect consumers from abuse by the national credit reporting agencies. The FCRA has been amended to include the FACT act (FACTA) that will provide additional consumer protection. This amendment enables a consumer to challenge any information via the Furnishers of information to the credit reporting agencies, giving consumers additional legal power to correct or make changes to their credit reports.

In the United States the legal term for a credit bureau under the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act is ‘consumer-reporting agency’. The three main national credit reporting bureaus collect and keep most of the credit history information. These bureaus work for profit and they do not posses any governmental affiliation. You need to work in accordance of these agencies because it is essential to have the right information in your report or else it might affect other aspects of your life. It can have a huge impact on your ability to get a loan sanctioned at a decent interest rate, if there is negative information in your credit report.