Today, the FTC and Fed Reserve announced that lenders will be required to provide free credit scores to borrowers when the lender uses a credit report to set high interest rates or other loan terms that aren’t the best available. The new rule will likely go into effect in July 2011. Lenders will also need [...]

Mark Greene, chief executive of Fair, Isaac & Co., creator and proprietor of the FICO score provided this explanation of credit scores: “The FICO score is a measure of a consumer’s financial health and creditworthiness,” Greene says. It’s simply a number, ranging from 300 to 850 — the higher the better. The average FICO score [...]

The credit reporting firm Experian is the target of a California lawsuit that claims the company duped customers by selling them bogus credit scores. The suit claims the company, through its Consumerinfo.com subsidiary, misled customers by selling them credit scores that are not the same ones used by lenders to evaluate customers for loans. The [...]

NY Time’ columinist Joe Nocera’s report on the tyranny of credit scores is right on the money. He points out that Fannie, Freddie and the banks that write mortgages depending on one thing–the applicant’s credit score. Nocera gives examples of perfectly credit-worthy consumes whose credit scores are low for odd and irrelevant reasons. For example, [...]

Understanding Importance of a Credit Report People who apply for a credit card, a loan for buying a house or a car, or a type of credit to use in purchasing large amount of commodity or service, are reviewed of their credit report by a potential lender. Information or data shown on credit reports are [...]