Don't Have a Credit Report? Now You Can Make Your Own.
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Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, January 26th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Your credit card activity and repayment habits on your credit report are pieces of the puzzle that make up your credit score. And that's a major factor in things like getting a loan or signing a lease. So for millions of Americans who don't have a credit report, financial opportunities like those have often been out of reach. But what if you could create your own credit report?
When somebody goes from having no credit report to having a credit report with a major credit reporting firm like Experian and a credit score, it can be life-changing.
Anna Maria Andriotis covers consumer credit for the WSJ. On today's show, she'll tell us about a new program from the credit agency Experian that lets consumers build their own credit report. That's after the break.
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You've heard us talk on the show before about ways to bolster your credit report and the benefits of improving your credit score. But millions of Americans who don't have a credit report are locked out of important services and benefits that could help improve their financial life. Now the credit reporting firm Experian is allowing some consumers to create their own credit report. The WSJ's Ana Maria Andreotis is here with the details. Ana Maria, thanks so much for being here.
Great to be speaking with you.
So, Ana Maria, let's start out with why Experian is doing this. Who specifically is this Create Your Own Credit Report program geared to?
What problem does Experian’s new 'Create Your Own Credit Report' program aim to solve?
This program is geared towards the roughly 28 million adults in the U.S. who do not have credit reports and, as a result, do not have credit scores. There are many different reasons why people fall into this situation of not having credit reports or scores. which can result in them not really having a history of loans with banks or other lenders that would be reporting that information to the major credit reporting firms in the US, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. People who fall into this category include college students who don't have any history of borrowing, people who avoid debt, even by choice, like retirees, for example. And many Black and Hispanic adults also fall into this category, either because they're underbanked or unbanked or for other reasons.
This also impacts people who are immigrants to the U.S., You could come here, middle age, and have a full credit report in the country where you used to live in, and you could have had a very good sort of credit standing there. But that doesn't really count for anything here in many cases, in large part because you're kind of starting with a clean slate. That good credit history is not available with the major credit reporting firms.
All right, so help us understand how this new program works. What kind of information would a consumer include in this sort of do-it-yourself credit report?
This kind of goes back to the efforts that have been underway for a few years now by the major credit reporting firms, including Experian.
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