Credit Bureaus to limit the reporting of public record data as of July 1st 2017 for consumer and business credit reports.

April 27, 2017 by Sandy Anderson-(Experian) Senior Vice President, Client Operations

Effects of lost or missing Public Record Data vs accuracy of FICO/Beacon Score

APRIL 26, 2017

DEAR CREDIT REPORT USER:

In 2015, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion announced the National Consumer Assistance Plan (NCAP), a set of initiatives designed to improve the accuracy of credit report information, as well as to provide consumers with a better experience interacting with the nationwide Credit Reporting Agencies.

In June 2016, the Credit Reporting Agencies announced enhanced public record data standards for the collection and timely updating of public record data reported on consumer credit reports. The enhanced standards require: (i) minimum consumer identifying information (name, address, social security number and/or date of birth) (“PII”) and (ii) minimum collection frequency for public records (at least every 90 days). These enhanced standards will apply to new and existing public record data on the Credit Reporting Agencies’ respective consumer credit reporting databases. As previously announced, these enhanced standards are effective July 1, 2017.

Based on information provided by our public record vendor about the data available from courts and recorders’ offices, we expect bankruptcy public record data will continue to meet the enhanced collection and reporting standards. However, civil judgments and approximately half of federal, state, local (county) tax lien data files are not expected to meet the enhanced standards.

During the week of July 10, 2017, the Credit Reporting Agencies will remove, from their databases and credit reports, previously collected public record data that does not meet the enhanced PII standards. This includes the removal of all judgment public records and the portion of federal,state and local (county) tax liens not meeting the enhanced standard. Public record data will also be monitored for adherence to the enhanced PII and collection frequency standards after July 1, 2017.

Despite the anticipated loss of significant volume of public record data from credit files, impact analysis conducted by the Credit Reporting Agencies, as well as leading scoring model companies using Credit Reporting Agency data, show a modest risk scoring impact and minimal loss in predictive performance as a result of these changes.

Please contact any member of your Account teams with questions you may have or forward questions to:

Experian: DataReporting@experian.com

Equifax: publicrecordsupport@equifax.com

TransUnion: TUDAS@transunion.com