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Credit Report: What is It?
Posted on Jun 28, 2007 by Tom Fragala
You may have heard different, perhaps confusing terms and definitions for a credit report. The three credit reporting companies, through their web site annualcreditreport.com define it this way:
A credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, provides you with all of the information in your credit file maintained by a consumer reporting company that could be provided by the consumer reporting company in a consumer report about you to a third party, such as a lender. A credit file disclosure also includes a record of everyone who has received a consumer report about you from the consumer reporting company within a certain period of time ("inquiries"). The credit file disclosure includes certain information that is not included in a consumer report about you to a third party, such as the inquiries of companies for pre-approved offers of credit or insurance and account reviews, and any medical account information which is suppressed for third party users of consumer reports. You are entitled to receive a disclosure copy of your credit file from a consumer reporting company under Federal law and the laws of various states.
It is not always called a credit report either. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), it is referred to as a consumer report. Sometimes the consumer credit reporting companies (also known as the bureaus or agencies), call it a consumer disclosure or credit file disclosure. The bureaus may also call the report they sell to merchants and creditors (about you) the “subscriber version” of a report. But the most common term is credit report. (As explained by Evan Hendricks).
Who maintains a credit report on you? Well, generally speaking, the consumer credit data repositories are maintained by three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
Tags: credit+file, credit+report, disclosure
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