Credit Bureaus: A Challenging Partnership

In the UK, the credit bureaus remain a critical component of successful lending. In this paper, we discuss how to optimise their usage and benefit while avoiding common pitfalls and high costs.

The triumvirate of UK credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – remain an integral part of the lending landscape. For all the recent focus on new data sources and techniques, it is a rare lender that does not have at least one touchpoint with the bureaus during their lending decision or customer management. But for many this relationship is not a comfortable one; high costs, byzantine terminology, and poor implementations can lead to a view of the credit reference agencies as a necessary evil rather than a beneficial partnership.