CFPB Uncovers Problems in Credit Reporting

American Banker
Tuesday, May 5, 2015

More than 26 million consumers are effectively "credit invisible" because they have no credit record and another 19 million are "unscored" because they have an insufficient or stale credit history, according to a CFPB report. The study found that in low-income neighborhoods, almost 30% of consumers were credit invisible while another 15% had records that can't be scored. Those percentages drop to 4% and 5%, respectively, in higher-income neighborhoods. The study also found that black and Hispanic consumers were more likely to fall into the "invisible" and "unscorable" credit records than Whites and Asians. About 15% of blacks and Hispanics had no score compared to 9% of whites. And 13% of Blacks and 12% of Hispanics have unscorable records compared to 7% of white consumers.