Picture yourself in this situation: Three years ago you had a serious medical problem, couldn’t earn money for months, and fell behind on your bills. Your credit scores plummeted and have remained depressed ever since – despite the fact that you’ve paid your rent, utilities, insurance, cable and other recurring bills on time scrupulously every month.
Your low credit scores – hovering in the mid-500s on the FICO scale – now prevent you from obtaining a mortgage or any other form of major credit at a reasonable interest rate. Mortgage lenders quote you 8 1/2 percent to 9 percent in a 6 percent market. Auto lenders want to gouge you with rates of 15 percent or higher. Credit-card companies either don’t want to know you, or want to slap you with fees and rates more appropriate for deadbeats.
Yet the fact is you are not a deadbeat. Your landlord could attest to that. So could the electric company, the gas company, the telephone company and maybe a payday lender you’ve used occasionally and repaid ahead of deadlines.
The problem is that nobody asks your landlord, nobody asks the telephone company, nobody asks small lenders about you. None of your sterling on-time payment performances get reported to the three national credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian and Trans Union – and that is why your FICO scores are stuck in “subprime” territory, where everything costs you more.
Millions of Americans experience variations on this problem every day. But that is about to change in a big way. More than 150 independent credit reporting companies across the country will soon begin offering mortgage lenders, brokers and other creditors a way to more accurately evaluate your full credit profile.
The National Credit Reporting Association (NCRA), the principal trade group for smaller, regional credit agencies, is teaming up with PRBC, the only national credit bureau that specializes in collecting and electronically updating “non-traditional” credit history information, to offer a new breed of “full picture” credit reports and scores.
PRBC was founded in 2002 under the name Pay Rent, Build Credit. Now its data collection efforts extend far beyond rents and include everything from alimony and child support payments to small-business loans, payday loans, telephone bills, and gas and electric charges, among others. PRBC turns non-traditional credit records into “BPS” scores – bill-paying scores – that lenders can use to supplement or enhance mainstream FICO scores.
Under a new agreement taking effect in early October, NCRA-member credit agencies that specialize in home-mortgage credit reports will be able to assist mortgage brokers and lenders whose loan applicants’ credit scores are artificially depressed by non-reported on- time payments. They will be able to input rent, utilities and a long list of other account payments to PRBC’s electronic data repository.
Consumers who have paid their bills on time will have their Equifax, Experian and TransUnion credit reports upgraded to reflect their performances. Lenders will also be able to order PRBC credit history reports separately, and to access applicants’ BPS scores. They will then be able to adjust their rate quotes and fees accordingly.
Under the federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act, lenders using national credit bureau data must give consideration to credit-performance information that loan applicants can document from credit accounts not included in national bureau files.
