Federal Report or Study

This February 2015 CFPB report reports on a series of consumer focus groups around credit reports and credit scores. The focus groups yielded rich detail about consumers’ experiences and what they know and think about credit reports and scores. This report summarizes what the CFPB heard from consumers and discusses how these findings could shape financial education approaches for consumers.

This December 2014 CFPB report describes characteristics of the medical and non-medical collections tradelines on consumers’ credit reports and the processes by which they appear and disappear. 19.5% of consumers with credit reports have one or more medical collections tradelines and 24.5%. contain one or more non-medical tradelines. 80% of tradelines that can be attributed to a particular creditor or provider are reported on accounts that originated with a healthcare provider, utility company, or telecommunications company. Most collections tradelines are for small amounts.

This May 2014 CFPB report considers the reporting of unpaid medical bills, where 99.4% of this information is reported to the national CRAs by collection agencies. Credit scoring models generally do not differentiate between medical collections and the other debts. VantageScore 3.0, excludes paid collections, but earlier versions treated paid and unpaid collections equally. The CFPB examination found that medical debt was less predictive of credit risk than non-medical collections, and that paid medical debt was less predictive than unpaid medical debt.

This December 2012 CFPB study describes the credit reporting infrastructure at the three largest nationwide consumer reporting agencies (NCRAs) to collect, compile, and report information about consumers. Most furnishers provide consumer credit information electronically to one or more NCRAs using a standardized format called Metro 2.