Information Warehouses
All of this information sharing could not take place unless somebody organized the whole thing. Information providers need to know who to tell. Information users need to know who to ask. It seems that they have figured this out pretty well.
Credit-Reporting Companies
The main stores of information are the credit-reporting companies. The three major ones, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian, are practically household names. Sometimes these companies are referred to as credit agencies or credit bureaus. These three companies have established themselves as the major players in the credit-reporting industry. If you want to find out about somebody, chances are that your prospective customer has a file at one or more of the major companies.
Which Company Is Best?
These days, there is not much difference between the three major credit-reporting companies. There was a time when one might have had an advantage over another. For example, one credit-reporting company might have had more complete information for consumers in a certain geographical region.
Some of the information on your credit report comes from public records. These might be court records that somebody thinks are important to a lending (or other) decision. This information is gathered from publicly available sources. You could go to the county courthouse, or perhaps their Web site, and find the exact same information.
The main differences come from who reports to the companies. Many creditors will report to all three of the major companies. However, not all do, so some companies have different information than other companies. Likewise, some lenders decide to buy credit information from just one of the reporting companies. The decision is usually not based on the quality of their data. The credit-reporting companies know that they are dependent on creditors for their information. Instead, information users buy credit information based on standard business decisions: service from the company, price, relationships, and ancillary products.
Other Sources
The credit-reporting companies are the most important sources of information regarding your credit. However, there are other organizations that keep information that can be used for lending decisions, insurance underwriting, and employment screening. Companies that track your bounced checks, public records aggregators, and employment-or rental-history firms all exist. These may be large firms like ChoicePoint and ChexSystems, or small specialty companies that only track niche items. These other sources of information can have a direct or indirect effect on the products and services that are available to you.
