By Thomas G. Wolfe, J.D.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has provided an updated list of credit card issuers, financial institutions, nonprofit credit providers, financial counseling providers, and other companies and organizations that offer free credit scores to customers or the general public. The list is based on voluntary responses to the Bureau’s November 2017 Federal Register notice asking companies whether they wanted to be included on the updated list of entities offering consumers free access to their credit scores. Further, as communicated in its May 16, 2018, release, the Bureau seeks to help consumers understand “how they can access and use their credit scores” to manage their finances.
As observed by the CFPB, while a consumer may request a credit report from each of the three national credit reporting agencies once every 12 months for free, that free credit report currently does not include a free credit score as well. In addition, the Bureau explains that a consumer’s credit score may vary depending on the applicable scoring model, the date on which the score was computed, the type of financial product involved, and the underlying data from a credit reporting company that was used to make the calculation. Consequently, a credit score that a consumer obtains from a company “may or may not be different from the one that company, and other businesses, later use to make credit decisions” about the consumer.
Updated list. Generally, the CFPB has organized its updated list by: (i) credit card issuers stating they offer free credit scores to certain customers; (ii) companies stating they offer free credit scores to customers using some of their other financial products besides credit cards; (iii) nonprofit credit and financial counseling providers stating they offer free credit scores to their clients; and (iv) companies stating they offer free credit scores to the general public.
While the Bureau accentuates the benefits of its updated list, the agency also states that the “accuracy of third-party information is not guaranteed and listing a company does not constitute an endorsement.”
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