What information appears on a credit bureau report and how do lenders use it?

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AcadiFi · Accepted Answer

A bureau report (often called a tri-merge when pulled from all three) contains several sections. Personal identifiers include name aliases, SSN fragment, addresses, and employers. The trade line section lists each open and closed credit account with issuer, account type, open date, credit limit, current balance, highest balance, payment history for typically 24 months, and status codes for delinquency or charge-off. Public records include bankruptcies, tax liens (removed from most consumer files in 2018), and civil judgments. Inquiries list hard pulls from prior 24 months and soft pulls separately. Collections lists third-party collection accounts. Lenders consume this data in two ways. First, the composite score (FICO or VantageScore) feeds a quick approve/decline gate. Second, bureau attributes — derived variables like 'months since most recent 60+ day delinquency' or 'count of revolving trades with balance > 90% of limit' — feed custom application scorecards. A lender like Hawthorn Community Bank might build a scorecard with 15 to 25 attributes plus applicant-supplied data (income, DTI, LTV on secured products) to produce an internal risk grade. ```mermaid flowchart LR A[Application] --> B[Tri-merge
pull] B --> C[FICO +
attributes] C --> D[Scorecard] D --> E[Decision +
price] ``` For FRM, know the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires adverse action notices citing the top reason codes that hurt the score.

What information appears on a credit bureau report and how do lenders use it?

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