Federal Agency Releases Report on Credit Scores

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released a report on consumers reviewing their credit reports for errors with the assistance of “study associates.”  The findings of the study included:

• One in four consumers, acting with the help of a “study associate”, identified errors on their credit reports that might affect their credit scores;
• One in five consumers had an error that was corrected by a credit reporting agency (CRA) after it was disputed, on at least one of their three credit reports;
• Four out of five consumers who filed disputes experienced some modification to their credit report;
• Slightly more than one in ten consumers saw a change in their credit score after the CRAs modified errors on their credit report; and
• Approximately one in 20 consumers had a score change of more than 25 points and only one in 250 consumers had a maximum score change of more than 100 points.

While the study has received a significant amount of press, an important point is that only 5 percent of credit report reviews detected a major error.