CFPB FinEx webinar: Accessing Credit Scores and Reports


NWX-CFPB HQ


April 27, 2017
1:00pm CT


Coordinator:	Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today’s conference. At that time you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone to ask a question.

I would like to inform all parties that today’s conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. 

I would now like to turn the conference over to Irene Skricki. Thank you. You may begin.  		

Irene Skricki:	Great. Thank you so much and welcome everybody to the CFPB FinEx webinar today. Our topic today is accessing credit scores and reports. And we’re very excited to have two speakers from the bureau as well as a guest speaker from Credit Builders Alliance, Sarah Chenven, who is joining us for the call today. 

What I’m going to do is just go through a few opening slides on the Financial Education Exchange. I know many of you are already part of the Exchange and get regular newsletters, but just in case there’s anyone new on the line I want to make sure we all start in the same place and then we’ll go to our topic of the day. 

	So first I have to do our standard disclaimer as a government employee, that what we’re saying does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice, and any opinion stated by the presenters are the presenters own and may not represent the Bureau’s views. And also with the guest speaker, we’re not affiliated with and we don’t endorse any speakers or entities participating in this presentation. 

So with that, quickly I’m sure most of you know this, but Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a fairly new -- actually five year old now -- federal agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. 

And it’s that last piece about helping consumers to take more control over their economic lives and navigate financial decisions that is where FinEx fits in in our webinar today. 

Just quickly, we’re with the Office of Financial Education but we work closely with the other offices in our broader consumer facing consumer education part of the Bureau, including Office of Students, Servicemember Affairs, Older Americans, Financial Empowerment -- which works with economicly vulnerable consumers -- and also Consumer Engagement. 
	
And we’re joined today by someone from Consumer Engagement, the office that manages our digital properties and generally works on reaching out to consumers in different ways. 

Most of you hopefully know this but Financial Education Exchange is essentially a way for the CFPB to reach out to financial educators and share our tools and materials with all of you and then hear back from you about what’s working, what isn’t working, different strategies that you’re trying, and generally learn about what’s going on out there in the world of Fin Ed. And also help connect you to each other to the extent possible. 

First of all, anyone who does not get a regular CFPB FinEx news and updates newsletter, we’d love for you to sign up. To do that, you can just email CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. That’s up on your screen. You can also see it on our website. And just let me know you want to join. And you’ll get a regular monthly newsletter with assorted news and updates. Again, most of you probably are in that already. 

	We again have over 2,400 who are part of that now, and now there are more than 2,000 who are part of our LinkedIn Discussion Group. And this month is actually our two-year anniversary for FinEx. We started in April 2015. Since we do a webinar a month, this is our 24th webinar. Feels like a meaningful milestone to have hit. 

And you can listen to all of those webinars. All of the previous webinars have been recorded and you can listen to them on our website. I’ll put the website up in just a second. 

We also have a set of tools and resources you can see in an inventory that is available both online and in print form -- The resource inventory for financial educators. We’re about to update it, so it’s going to look different really soon and I’m excited about that. So stay tuned and we will let you know when that happens. 

All of that can be found on our Financial Education website which is part of the general CFPB website Resources for Financial Educators web page. The URL is consumerfinance.gov/adult-financial-education. And again, anybody who wants that URL, I’ll show it later as well. 

Lastly, we have a discussion group on LinkedIn where you can post your own resources and questions as well as see of our stuff. So just want to make a plug for that. 

And now, we’re going to turn to today’s topic. So thank you everyone for bearing with me through that. I just want to make sure that everyone knows who we are and what we’re here to do. 

So today we’re going to be covering an exciting topic that I know is of interest to almost every financial educator I’ve ever talked to, relating to credit scores and reports. And the Bureau has some new things out about that. And we also have a guest speaker to talk about that. 

During the presentations I will be monitoring the Q&A feature on the webinar. So if anyone has any clarifying questions, you can just email them to me via or Q&A them to me within the WebEx. And then once we’ve heard the presentations, we will open for voice questions as well. And we’ll give you the instructions on that. So we should have time for questions at the end. 

I am very pleased to turn this over to my colleague Maria Jaramillo also here in the Office of Financial Education to talk to you about our new resources on accessing credit score and reports. Go ahead, Maria.

Maria Jaramillo:  Thank you. So I want to start by providing some background on credit scores and reports. So the Fair Credit Reporting Act entitles consumers to a free credit report every 12 months from each nationwide consumer reporting company and from specialty consumer reporting companies. Consumers can request these reports on annualcreditreport.com.

Credit scores are also a very important took that can help consumers better understand their credit standing. Credit scores are calculated based on the date on a person’s credit report and are used by lenders to predict how likely a person is to pay back a loan on time. 

In the case of credit scores, however, there is no mandate that requires companies to provide free credit scores to consumers. 

Until recently, consumers couldn’t easily access their credit scores and know if they had to pay to get them. But over the last few years, many credit card and other companies have begun to offer consumers free access to their scores. This service, which is offered as a customer benefit through credit cards, deposit accounts, or other loans, is the service we’re highlighting in the company list -- which I’ll talk about in a bit. 

Access to free scores is also being offered through other channels -- for example, through services that offer scores to the general public -- as a way to acquire new potential customers. The services that offer credit scores to the general public include online consumer credit resources, such as credit card among others. They also include services offered by financial institutions such as Discover, Capital One, and Chase. 

And then in addition, access to scores is a service that is offered by a growing number of non-profit financial counselors, and Sarah Chenven from Credit Builder Alliance will talk about more that in a bit. 

I also wanted to mention that consumers are entitled by law to access scores under special circumstances, such as when a consumer is turned down for a loan, insurance, or employment, or experiences another adverse action based on the information on the credit report. In this case, the consumer has a legal right to receive free of charge the credit report and the credit score the institution used to take this adverse action. 

Lenders are also generally required to provide consumers a credit score when they apply for a residential mortgage. 

And I just wanted to highlight also that in the case of credit reports, customers are also entitled to free reports if the person is receiving a public welfare assistance or if the person has been a victim of identity theft. 

And lastly on this slide you can see that some identity theft tracking services may include options like regular access to that consumer’s credit reports and scores. 

And to wrap up this slide, I just wanted to highlight that all these options for accessing scores highlight the key message that there is not just one score in the market. Lenders use an array of credit scores. And we’ll come back to this point a little later. Okay. So, next slide. Now, we’re there. 

Why do we think that access to scores is important? Well, it can be a first step toward a consumer learning more about their credit history, it can be a teachable moment to explain the factors that impact the credit score, and how a consumer’s credit behavior gets reflected in this number. 

It can also be possibly a source of confusion, as more consumers may see their scores sometimes from multiple sources and these numbers may vary. Therefore, this creates an opportunity to provide additional education related to where scores come from, why is it that a person does not just have one score. Next slide. 

So in order to highlight the industry’s efforts to expand access to free credit scores and to create consumer awareness of this service, we published recently a list of credit card issuers that offer this service to their customers. We let industry know this initiative by issuing a notice in the federal register’s website. And the notice asked credit card issuers and companies in other markets if they offer their customers the ability to obtain free of charge a credit score, if they wanted to be included on this list. 

We received responses from the top largest credit card issuers, which together account for approximately 90% of the total credit card balances in the market. We also received responses from four smaller banks, seven credit card unions, from three other organizations, as well as from consumers.

The document we published includes a list of the credit card issuers that responded to this notice. It is important to mention that other issuers not on this list may also offer this service. 

In the document, we also include links to the comments submitted by each company and we encourage consumers to check this information or to contact each company to find out which specific credit card products are eligible for the service and on what conditions they are offered. 

The company list can be used by financial educators and practitioners like you to raise awareness among your customers that they may be able to reasonably obtain a free score through their credit card company. The document can also be used to remind consumers that regularly checking scores and reports is an important step for managing their financial lives.   

This company list explains also that a consumer does not have one score -- that lenders use different scores which vary by score providers, scoring model, timing, and the credit report data used. 

And the letter part of the document also includes links to additional educational resources that can be useful to consumers. 

In the company list, we also mention other options consumers have to access a free score, it mentions companies which provide free credit scores to the general public, such as the ones I mentioned earlier, and it highlights that even though the service may have no cost, consumers may generally need to register and enter personal information and that these companies may then market products to those consumers. 

The list also mentions the access to scores through certain non-profit organizations. And it highlights that some of the companies on the list may also provide this service to customers that use other financial products they offer. 

We have also developed an infographic which could be used as a valuable resource to explain to consumers why is it that there is not one score in the market and where scores come from. The graphic divided into three parts.

The first part that you see on this slide provides examples of different credit scores a consumer might have. For example, the score you saw online provided by your credit card company. Then in the middle it could represent the score when you signed up for a free monitoring service. And then the last circle could be the example of when your auto lender showed you the score that they use to evaluate your application.

And the tip we share with consumers is that at any given point that lenders are using slightly different scores than the ones the consumer sees. Next slide. 

The second part presents key components that determine why there are difference scores. It mentions that a score uses data from a credit reporting company and that each company may have slightly different data. In the column in the middle, it highlights the scores are not calculated on a fixed schedule, so they depend on when data is updated at a reporting company and when the score is actually calculated. 

In the last column on the right, it mentions that companies have created multiple versions of their scoring models and update them frequently. 

The tip for consumers in this part of the graph is that even though there are parts of the credit score business that are beyond their control, what they can do is make it a habit to check their credit reports each year to annualcreditreport.com and (unintelligible). Next slide.      

Irene Skricki:	And Maria, the infographic you’re showing, which normally we see on one whole page.

Maria Jaramillo:	Yes. 

Irene Skricki:	We’re breaking it into chunks. That is available on our website. I know it was in the blog that went out about this company list you’ve been describing. 

Maria Jaramillo:	Exactly. 

Irene Skricki:	Is it available any other way? Or people could look at it on the website and potentially cut and paste it and use it if they wanted?

Maria Jaramillo:   Yes, or in the newsletter that you receive from FinEx there is a link to the blog that talks about the company list. At the bottom of the blog, you can find the infographic as well as a link to the infographic. And as Irene said, you can - it’s one graph but you can divide it in pieces as you see you need it for your consumers. 

Irene Skricki:	It appears in several places on our site. 

Maria Jaramillo:	Yes. 

Irene Skricki:	So we’ll get to that in just a minute. Thank you. 

Maria Jaramillo:	Thanks. So just to wrap up, the third part of this graph draws consumer’s attention to what they can control, which is their credit use and behavior. As you see on this slide, it highlights key elements that impact their score and provides the tip that paying loans on time and staying well below our credit limit can help a consumer get and keep credit scores. So we hope that the infographic can be useful. 

Thank you. And I’ll now pass it on to (Liane).  

Irene Skricki:	Great. Yes. And the company list that was described as well as the infographic is all on our website. And in just a second, when I switch slides (Liane Wiesenberger) from our Consumer Engagement Division will talk about the portal on our website that has all of our credit scores and reports materials in one easy place. So, let me move forward with (Liane). Okay, here we go.  

(Liane Wiesenberger): Hi everybody. As Irene mentioned, we just recently launched a new credit reports and scores portal, which is a website located on the Consumerfinance.gov page. 

The goal of this website was to surface the most critical information a person needs to know about their credit reports and scores into one place. Our primary goal for the page was to provide people with information that’s foundational, related to credit reports and scores, to help people fix urgent issues that are impacting their financial situation, and finally to direct people to the most relevant information for their personal financial information. 

\Overall, the page can be used as a primer for financial newcomers and a place to quickly learn about the actions available to an individual to fix any issues that they may be facing. 

At the top of the page, you’ll see a featured image which will be frequently updated to provide critical and timely information. That images links you to at this point the fantastic open score work that Maria just discussed, including that infographic she shared in her presentation. So you can go there and download it. 

As new resources and information become available, we will be updating that featured component of the site. 

The page itself is broken into three primary parts. The first part focuses on the basics or credit reports and scores, including terms that a person might run into while educating themselves. 

Once an individual has the basics down, the second part goes a little deeper. This part of the page explores common issues people face with credit reports and scores and how to solve them.

And the final part is action-focused, providing actionable how-to's that supplement our informative print resources. Next slide. 

Irene Skricki:	Great. And I’ll just note -- I know that these screen shots are a little hard to see. We chose to not do a live demo. So I know this is hard to see, but you can go and see all of this on our website afterwards if needed. 	

(Liane Wiesenberger):	Yes. And there’s a lot of information there, so you probably wouldn’t be able to read it if we anyways. So there’s a lot of great stuff there and you can poke around the site itself. And I’ll explain a little bit later how to find the site and how to start yourself on that journey through our portal.

On this slide, you’re seeing a screen grab of our essentials page and one of the sections located there. As you can see if focuses on things like how to get a credit report, what to look for in your credit report, and one of the most popular questions on the Ask CFPB site -- what is the difference between a credit report and a credit score? 

By clicking through to each one of these items, it will bring you to a page that provides easy-to-understand information that people can use to take action and become one step better off in their financial situation. 

On the next slide, we’re looking at understanding your situation. So on this part of the page, we’ve identified common issues that an individual might face like having a credit application denied, not having enough credit history, or having been the victim of fraud or identity theft. 

If you click through to any of these items, you’re presented with again easy-to-understand information that guides a person step-by-step through addressing their issue or concern. 

We’ve also listed some of the other things a person should be aware of as they are looking to improve their financial standing. This includes addressing some of the myths around credit reports and scores. We highlight key topics, including that a person can request their own credit report without hurting their credit score, that a person can dispute inaccurate information on their credit report for free, and that they can request credit reports from specialty consumer reporting agencies. 

The third part of that page, located just under Understanding the Situation, talks about taking action. And it includes additional how-to guides that are just some of the resources we have available to help people take action on their situation. The how-to guides featured here are how to dispute an error on a credit report, tips for building and keeping a credit score, and how to tell a reputable credit counselor from a bogus credit repair company. 

Individuals are also able to submit a complaint through this part of the page and it’s very easy to do so if they’re not able to address their concern any other manner. 

On the next slide, I’ve pulled out some screen shots of some of the fantastic templates and guides that we have featured. One of the most popular guides that we have is for disputing information from a furnisher or a credit reporting company. We have sample letters and also a detailed guide on how to submit those letters that are available on that portal on the right-hand side under some of our resources. We find this to be again, very popular amongst people. It makes this process very easy. So I highly recommend taking a look at that and seeing how those might benefit your clients.        

On the next slide, we have some of our other pertinent resources. We have these all available through the site. Many of them are located under the Print Resources section. Again, I highly recommend downloading these to share them with your clients. 

Some of the topics we address are encouraging people to check their credit report at least once a year, how to understand your credit score, how to rebuild your credit, and building your credit from scratch.   	

Irene Skricki:	And I’ll just note, some of these you can also order from our bulk ordering website. So you can actually get these sent to you if you want to hand them out to clients that you’re working with. Some, not all. But most of them you can order.  

(Liane Wiesenberger):	Great.  So as I promised, this is going to be some information on how to actually get to this portal. I want to start by saying that this is just one of several portals and pages that we’re going to be launching over the next several months. Our goal with all of these is to again, present that information in a holistic way.

So we have already launched credit reports and scores last month. And earlier this year, a portal page on debt collection. 

I also want to point out that if you have other questions that you are not able to find through the portal, there are related questions that are identified there. And you can also always go or Ask CFPB section of our site. All of those links are available under Consumer Tools at consumerfinance.gov.    

Irene Skricki:	Great. Thank you very much, (Liane). And I am monitoring the questions here. There’s a whole slew of them saying the slides aren’t advancing, and hopefully we’ve resolved that. 

For those of you who asked about the PowerPoint, we are happy to send out the deck. I will let you know that most of the early slides were just about FinEx, so you weren’t missing much in the way of content on credit scores if you didn’t see the first few slides. But we’re happy to send the whole deck out. But you’ll need to email me at the FinEx box -- CFPB_FinEx F-I-N-E-X at CFPB.gov -- and say you want the PowerPoint and we will send it to you. 

I don’t have a list of everyone on this webinar, so I can’t just send it to everybody. So you have to request it. But we are happy to send that to you and then you can see those missing slides. Sorry about that again. 

Wow, there’s also all kinds of interesting questions coming in on content questions. What is that email again? CFPB_FinEx F-I-N-E-X at CFPB.gov. So CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov.  So you can get the deck that way. 

And then as I mentioned, we’re starting to get all kinds of interesting questions about credit score issues -- some of which we may be able to answer, some of which we may not be able to answer.  	

But I think what I’d like to do as we’re not as I mentioned earlier in a position to give kind of legal interpretation or guidance, but what I’d like to do is have our guest speaker speak because she actually may be able to answer some of those questions. And we’ll read all of those at the end. 

So, we’ll get to some of the more content questions after our guest speaker. So I am very excited to introduce Sarah Chenven from Credit Builders Alliance, which is - well I’ll let her explain what CBA does. But they have been a real resource and expert in the area of access to credit scores and reports for quite a number of years. 

and so, she’s going to talk to us a little bit about their work and how she can help and her group can help practitioners to access reports and scores for their clients. So Sarah I will turn it over to you and then after that, we’ll start going through the questions. Welcome, Sarah. 

Sarah Chenven:	Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Irene and thank you, Maria for inviting CBA to participate on this webinar. We’re really excited. We are big supporters of the work that CFPB does and very honored to be able to present today. 

Credit Builders Alliance exists to help mission driven entities -- primarily non-profits and municipal governments -- to help their clients move from poverty to prosperity through credit building. And our theory of change is a good credit history is a financial asset. 

Currently, we have a membership of approximately 475 non-profits and municipalities in almost every state across the country, including Puerto Rico. And our credit building community is really diverse and comprised of a really wide variety of organizations -- non-profit lenders, community action programs, United Way and Goodwill affiliates, small community credit unions, affordable and public housing providers, workforce development programs, small business development programs. You name it -- they are in our membership. 

CBA believes really strongly that at its core, successful credit building is about helping your clients build and leverage strong credit in order to achieve their goals -- whatever those goals may be, both in the short term and in the longer term. 

And we believe that this requires the combination of three key elements -- all of which you can build into any credit building program. 

The first element is all about knowledge. So that involves the credit education that you provide that helps clients understand their own credit profile and how the decisions that they make will influence that credit profile. 

Next, the access element is really about connecting you clients with responsible and relevant products that they need in order to establish and build strong credit. 

And then finally, your coaching and/or your counseling process can support and encourage the ongoing positive behaviors or actions that you see listed here needed to build and sustain strong credit over time. 

As you’ve already heard today, though there are sometimes lumped together credit reports and credit scores, or the lack of both, are two essential tools to helping a client understand, build, and measure the progress of their credit profile as it evolves. Both the credit report and the scores are important to understand and both can be used as key financial education tools.  

And as many of you know on the line, a credit report is really a comprehensive tool that provides valuable insight into someone’s financial history, into their knowledge and into their behavior. And for those with established credit files, credit reports are excellent tools for understanding a person’s historical credit payment patterns and financial relationships. And they can help inform critical budget decisions based on existing debt obligations. 

	If a person however has no credit history or a thin file with no open and active credit accounts in good standing, the lack of information on a credit report is an equally powerful queue that provides practitioners with the perfect opportunity to introduce credit building and leverage ongoing credit building success to help clients track their progress along that path to greater financial stability and greater financial security in real time. 
	
Early on, reviewing credit reports with clients can help them prepare and plan for their goals and is really key. And then this is really important because the timing of when a credit report and score is pulled for an application review for a product is really critical. 

And then of course as individuals begin to build credit, credit reports reviewed at regular intervals offer a series of teachable moments that can motivate individuals to continue to improve their financial behavior and to ultimately achieve those goals that they set for themselves. 

Most of you know that just like credit scores, there are also different types of credit reports. We’ve heard a lot about essentially what we call consumer disclosure credit reports today, or access to those kinds of reports -- those reports that consumers request for themselves through portals like annualcreditreport.com. 

Lenders and other businesses -- including non-profit practitioners that pull reports on behalf of applicants or on behalf of clients -- will receive what is called a business division credit report. So why would non-profits want or need to pull a business division credit report? Requesting business division credit reports in real time generally requires less identifying information than a consumer disclosure report. 
	
For example, it’s impossible for a consumer to access their consumer disclosure report via annualcreditreport.com if they don’t have a social security number. Doesn’t mean they can’t access their report by writing to the credit bureaus by sending it by mail or sending an email, they may be able to get the report that way. But to access it online right away, you do have to have a social security number. 

And it may also be difficult to access it due to some of the security questions that can use complicated wording or can just be confusing and can make it difficult for consumers to answer required identifying information that are necessary for security reasons. 

Furthermore, pulling business division credit reports with proper client written authorization means that many non-profits don’t have to rely on the client to have access to the report themselves during that coaching session. And also allows them to track client’s progress over time. 

Last but not least, non-profit coaches and/or counselors can purchase a wider variety of scores at a much less expensive purse score amount along with the business division report if they are credentialed by the credit bureaus to - or the credit reporting agencies to be able to purchase that business division report. 

There are a number of ways that qualified non-profits offering financial coaching and/or counseling can access business division reports. One of them is through CBA’s own access service, which is an umbrella arrangement with both Transunion and Experian --we’re hoping eventually with Equifax as well -- that helps non-profits become credentialed to pull these reports along with credit scores at highly discounted tiered rates. 

Many of you on the line may also work for a credentialed credit counseling agency generally which have their own arrangements with the bureaus or if you’re a HUD-certified home ownership program, you may also be accessing credit reports and scores, particularly tri-merge reports, through credit reporting agencies like Core Logic Credco.  

To give you a sense of at least the volume of non-profits within CBA’s own membership that are pulling business division reports for the permissible purpose of financial counseling through our CBA access service, out of our total membership of 475 non-profits and municipalities, 337 of them are pulling almost 8,200 reports -- again, primarily for that permissible purpose of financial counseling -- every month.  

However, as we heard earlier, it’s essential to ensure that clients still understand how to access their own credit reports -- ideally through annualcreditreport.com. 

In some cases, especially when you’re working with clients who haven’t seen their credit report in a long time, if ever, it can be beneficial to start just by pulling reports from all three credit bureaus via annualcreditreport.com in addition to pulling the business division credit report and whatever scores you’re purchasing with that, if you have the authorization and the credentialing to do so. 
	
This gives clients a complete picture of their credit history with all three bureaus and helps them to practice reading and understanding different types of credit reports. 

Once folks have a good sense and understand how to access and review their credit reports through annualcreditreport.com most of our member coaches and counselors advise them as a best practice to pull a report from each bureau every four months -- so one report from one bureau every four months, which is a great way to watch out for ID theft and errors on a regular basis. Again, also without having to pay for credit monitoring services to do that.         

Before I launch into my comments on this slide, I just want to stop and say that Credit Builders Alliance is really agnostic to what score or scores our members use for credit coaching and for credit counseling. And we have a really good working relationship with the credit bureaus that have their own proprietary scores with FICO and with Vantage Score. 

I was invited to talk specifically FICO Open Access for Credit and Financial Counselors, so I’m going to focus on the FICO scores. But I do want to say that historically those purchasing discounted reports through CBA’s Access Program have been able to shar the Vantage score with their clients and it was in 2015 to sort of much fanfare around our membership that FICO also extended access to FICO scores to be able to be shared with clients by practitioners through the FICO Open Access for Credit and Financial Counselors Program. 

And that is for those who are qualified to participate in that program.  

So why would you want to participate in the FICO Open Access for Credit and Financial Counseling Program? As a non-profit, you heard Maria, you know, delineate I think really well a number of reasons for why any practitioner would want to work with their clients to share credit scores generally to track progress, credit building, and credit profile progress over time, with FICO in particular.

FICO scores are used in over 90% of lending decisions in the United States, so you’re really helping clients. The likelihood that a vendor or a creditor is going to be using a FICO score -- even if it’s just one score among some others or among other factors -- is pretty great. And in some cases, it’s going to be the only score that is going to matter vis a vis the goal that your client might have.   

The example that we use is if you’re applying for an FHA mortgage, at this time lenders can only use a FICO score as part of their underwriting for that. And so, preparing a client for this particular goal would necessitate accessing the relevant FICO score. 

So, what does it mean to participate in the FICO Open Access for Credit and Financial Counselors Program? I won’t get into too many of the details here for the sake of time, but there are three key criteria. 

The first is that the organization must be a 501(c)(3) or a government entity with the primary purpose of providing financial counseling and/or financial educational services. The second is that the organization has to have in place an end user agreement with one or more of the credit bureaus or in certain cases with a data reseller. The third criterion is that the organization cannot be what is called a credit repair organization as defined by the Credit Repair Organizations Act.  

And you heard (Liane) note something about distinguishing between proper debt management organizations and those that are bogus credit repair organizations. So, you can learn more about the details of the program by going go the link that you see up here on the slide community.fico.com/openaccesscfc. 

And the process for participating in the program is first really determining eligibility, your organization’s eligibility. Second, signing a program license agreement with FICO. And once you’re approved, the third step is setting up to access the members section of FICO’s Open Access for CFC Web Community. They have a great website here that has a lot of great information and once you’re approved, you’ll have access to a special forum on their website that serves as a really great community where you can share with others, learn from others, download a lot of great resources. 

And then fourth as part of the resources, downloading the program content that FICO makes available. So, a lot of materials on FICO scores, a lot of great resources on sort of the foundational, you know, what constitutes the score. And then fifth is training your coaches and counselors on that content. The last step is to start sharing the score in the coaching and counseling session. 

And just really quickly before we go to the next slide, you can see at the bottom here some useful resources offered by FICO. And if you are a CBA member, we also had a webinar that FICO conducted specifically on this program, which was recorded and we have a tip sheet. So, if you’re not a CBA member, you can’t access the webinar but I am happy to send out the tip sheet also to anybody who might be interested. And if you are and you are contacting Irene for a copy of this presentation, go ahead and note that and hopefully I can send over the tip sheet and she can send that along as well. Next slide, please. 

Okay. So, there’s one other key to sharing FICO scores that’s really important to the process here, and that is that you have to use as a supplement to any other tools that you might provide with FICO calls its FICO Score Generator Tool to provide the information. 

This is an Excel based form. And again, it’s required to show the FICO score, whatever FICO score it is that you’re purchasing, to your client. What is really neat about it is that it really only requires a couple of pieces of information that are taken by the coach, by the counselor from the credit report that you’re viewing -- including the name of the bureau that you’re getting the report from, your client’s name, the FICO score you pull, the date of the pull, the top two reason codes given for the FICO score, and then the score version that you pulled. 

And then once you enter all of that information -- which, you know, does not take long at all -- into this Excel spreadsheet, the spreadsheet itself will automatically populate an output page that will show you and the client information about the score and give you more information about the top two reasons that you entered, kind of specific to the score, specific to your report, and specific to the version of the score that you’re using. 

So, it’s a really neat tool that is a supplement for any tool that you might already be using with your clients during that coaching and counseling session. 

Just to get you then a sense of how many groups are currently participating in FICO’s Open Access for Credit and Financial Counseling Program, according to FICO there are currently 64 non-profits signed on, and I know new ones signing on every day. And almost 60% of those are also CBA members, so we’ve been a strong proponent of this program and recommend it to all of our members who purchase through their business division reports FICO scores so that they can share them with their clients during the coaching and counseling session. 

And we’re always happy to talk to anybody about the program and about CBA’s access service, if it might be a good fit for your organization. 	

And with that, I’m going to turn it back over to Irene.      	

Irene Skricki:	Great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. That was very helpful. And again, a lot of that information was directed at financial educators who might want to use this service. I know a lot of folks on the line are also perhaps not financial educators but are have some specific questions about credit topics, so we’ll try to get to some of those.

One quick question as a follow up, Sarah. Someone asked is there a cost to your program, to the CBA Access Program?   

Sarah Chenven:	There are costs to the organization and we only work organizations -- so not with individuals. There is a setup fee to work with us to get your application over to the credit bureaus and there is a cost obviously to purchasing the reports and the scores. But again, it’s discounted if you go through our umbrella. 

I do want to clarify that there’s no additional cost that is charged by FICO at all for participating in the Open Access for Credit and Financial Counseling.  

Irene Skricki:	Great. Thank you. So, this is terrific and we have a whole lot of questions. So, I’ll just let everyone know at the beginning we won’t be able to get to all of them. And I also want to give some people the opportunity to do voice questions as well. So, Operator, can you quickly give the instructions for voice questions? And then I’ll start to go through some of the questions we’re getting via the Q&A function.

Coordinator:	Sure. Again, if you’d like to ask a question on the audio conference, press star then 1. Make sure that you unmute your phone line and record your name clearly. I will require your name to introduce the question. If you need to withdraw your question, it’s star then 2. Again, to ask a question star then 1. 	

Irene Skricki:	Great. Thank you. So, while people are doing that, I want to note I put up one final slide. A lot of people have been emailing asking for the FinEx email address. It is now up there. The second thing there is CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov and that is how you can both request slides, request how to get in touch with Sarah if you want, and also to sign up for FinEx if you’re not already getting our regular newsletters. 

I also put up the Adult Financial Education URL web cage consumerfinance.gov/adult-financial-education. Also if you just go to consumerfinance.gov you can navigate to the Credit Scores portal from the top of the page. There’s a place for consumer resources and you can find your way to that as well. So, a number of ways to get to some of these pieces. 

And the infographic Maria showed and referenced is right now the featured piece on the Credit Scores and Reports Portal. So again, it is all up there. 

So, lots of interesting questions. This is one that came in early:  given some of the issues with credit scores, someone asks how useful are scores? Isn’t it more important to get and review credit reports and deal with what’s on them? 

 I’m just going to answer that quickly and others can chime in -- which is that absolutely I think we have always said, and most people have always said, you want people to look at reports and look carefully and look for errors and understand what’s on there and think about how to improve credit histories, if needed. 

But because people are interested in scores, and they want to know the one number. It’s hard to resist. And because people have been buying those scores, we just want to make sure that people know that there may be a way to get a free score. 

So again, our hope is those who do see free scores through potentially getting them from their credit card or other companies as Maria described might then be motivated and we would encourage people to then go look at the report. So, I think reading the reports and going from there is always the one key end goal. But the scores may be a way again. People are interested. They want to know. And we want to make sure people know that they may have a way to get them without paying and make sure people are aware of that. 

Does that make sense, Maria? 	

Maria Jaramillo:	Yes. I think just that I would add that the credit score can help you get a sense of your credit standing and it can help a consumer track and improve their credit using behavior. Again, we don’t want consumers obsessing over the number, but if the number starts to vary significantly, it could help consumers - it could be an indication that there’s fraud or that there’s something happening, that there’s unusual activity and therefore they should go and check on their credit report. 

So, it’s a sense of a bigger picture. There are variations in scores. We don’t want to make those variations the key issue for a consumer but if they see significant changes in the number, they should be aware that that means something else might be going on and they need to check their credit report.   

Another key message just to follow up is that there is not just one score in the market. We think that is an important message to put out, that they are variations, they’re different models and that the score the lender is using might be slightly different than the one a consumer might have seen.  	

Irene Skricki:	Great. Thank you. I’m going to ask one question here that I’ve seen a couple times -- someone who really wants to get this answered -- which is how do people receiving public assistance request or receive their credit score? So, I think someone on public assistance is not in any different position than someone not on public assistance. You can always get your free credit report by going through annualcreditreport.com. That’s mandated by federal law. For credit reports, you have all the options Maria described, which are you can if you have - if you want your score, sorry. It’s so hard to not interchange those terms…

Maria Jaramillo:	Yes. 

Irene Skricki:	…but it’s important not to. So, for the score, the same options you can if the person has a credit card, they may be eligible to get a free score that way. There are some online credit services that Maria mentioned that one can go to and get a score. You always want to be sure you understand some of the caveats there. I mean, there’s no difference in being on public assistance and if you are not in terms of getting access to the score. 

But again, everyone can get their report for free once a year from each of the three bureaus. 

So, let’s check on voice questions now. Operator, are there any voice questions?

Coordinator:	Yes, we have one question. (Tawana Laughton) your line is now open. 

(Tawana Laughton):	I just wanted to know how accurate are the FICO scores where the credit card companies are providing it, such as like Discover card. How accurate can someone utilize that to determine whether or not they can reach that next step in going to purchase a home, for example? 

Maria Jaramillo:	I think it’s difficult to talk about accuracy. As we mentioned, they are different models in the market. And so, I think it would be important to understand that that number gives the consumer a sense of where they are and what score range they are and how likely that is to help them get the mortgage that they’re expecting. But ultimately the score the mortgage lender will use might be slightly different. 

As Sarah mentioned, there’s a high use of the FICO score by lenders. It’s important to mention that some lenders use data from different credit reporting companies, from different scores and calculate their own and use their own models, internal models, to determine and evaluate and make a credit decision. 

Sarah Chenven:	And if I could just add to that too, it’s also important to understand that the score is a score or any combination of scores is one factor in the underwriting of certainly of things like mortgages and other asset based credit products. 

Irene Skricki:	Okay. Actually, I have another. I’m going to read another one of the email questions here -- which there are many. Thank you for all of the questions. And again, we’ll try to get to a few more, though we will run out of time pretty soon. 

But a question specific to the CBA Program. Someone says as I understand it, a CBA membership allows you to access a client’s credit report but you are not allowed to print or give the client a copy of their own report. Is that true? And if so, why is that? 

Sarah Chenven:	So that used to be the guidance that we provided. And just to clarify, too, the CBA Access Service provides you with the ability to apply to become credentialed to purchase a business division credit report. We make no guarantees and can’t speak on behalf of the Bureaus themselves, so the ultimate decision is theirs. 

And it’s true that it used to be the case that credit counselors and financial counselors and credit coaches could not provide a copy of the credit report physically to the customer or to the client to walk away with. But that in our understanding has changed. And so now, it is our understanding that both with Transunion and with Experian you may give a copy of that report to the customer or the client. And there might be some certain conditions. We have some guidance documents on our website. I’m also happy if folks want to reach out to me, Sarah with an H @CreditBuildersAlliance.org to send you those guidance documents as well. 

Irene Skricki:	Great. Let’s see. I’ll ask for a voice in one more second, but a number of people have asked -- and I’m going to direct this to Sarah because I think we’re not in a position to comment on this. But can you address the new credit score calculation method being implemented later this year by Vantage Score? There’s been a number of questions about that. Sarah, do you know about that?  

Sarah Chenven:	Yes. We know that there is likely to be a 4.0 coming out. I don’t have any information more detailed information about that right now. I can say that we are very likely to be hosting a webinar in the near future if not, you know, early 2018 that would feature Vantage Score so they can talk about the new score and all of the implications of that new version or new generation of Vantage Score. 

Irene Skricki:	Okay. Great. Yes. Operator, just check. Do we have any voice questions? 

Coordinator:	Currently no further questions on the audio portion. 

Irene Skricki:	Great. Because I’m inundated here on the Q&A, which is wonderful. Let’s just try to get a couple more before we run out of time. Let me just - this one is interesting. Any resources - and actually I guess I’ll direct this to Sarah because I don’t think that the CFPB people can answer this. Any resources that you know of being able to use I guess to access a credit score for ITIN holders? So, people with an Individual Tax Identification Number as opposed to a social security number. I assume that’s an authentication issue with the bureaus.  

Sarah Chenven:	Yes. You’re exactly right. So, whether you have an ITIN or not, you know, whether you have a social security number I guess I should say or not, if you have a credit record and if it’s, you know, if there’s enough recent activity and enough active trade lines to generate a credit score, again depending on which score generator or which scores you’re trying to pull, then you will be able to access the - or you will have a credit score. 

So, it does not matter whether you don’t have a social security number. That’s really more of a as Irene said an authentication issue. If you’re able to access a credit report and you have enough credit history to generate the score, then you will be able to have a score. And then, of course, getting access to that score is the next step. 

Irene Skricki:	Right. Great. I’m going to squeeze a couple more questions in here quickly. One person said I work at a homeless shelter. Annualcreditreport.com requires a $1.00 refundable fee, which most guests cannot comply with because they have no money or don’t have a credit card. Is there a way to get around this? That surprises me, because I check my credit report on creditreport.com and have not encountered that. Sarah, is that something you’re familiar with? 

Sarah Chenven:	No. There shouldn’t be any sort of refundable fee I don’t think so with annuacreditreport.com. There’s you know, there’s lots of websites that seem similar to annualcreditreport.com so it is possible maybe that there’s another site being used. But you shouldn’t be being asked for that. 

Irene Skricki:	Yes, exactly. I think so be very careful. There should be no request for a credit card…

Sarah Chenven:	Right. 

Irene Skricki:	…or money or anything else from www.annualcreditreport.com. That is the federally mandated site. All the ones with different names, you know, we don’t know what they do. And we really urge people to go to the annualcreditreport.com. 

All right. I’m going to squeeze in one more question just because it really gets to the heart of this, I think. It says sometimes I have people use Credit Karma but I don’t know the advantages or disadvantages of Credit Karma versus annualcreditreport.com. 

Maria and I can maybe both answer this. Annualcreditreport.com  will give you your report, which is we think very important. You can’t get your score from that unless you pay. There is a - Credit Karma will give you a score that they get. I think it’s Transunion scores from Credit Karma -- one of the bureaus. 

You know, there it is free but there will be marketing and you are giving out some of your personal information. So, as Maria 
referenced earlier, there are ways to get your scores that are free and that don’t require a customer relationship with an institution, but you have to understand that you will then be subject to marketing and you would have to give up some information for you to be able to get that score. And that may be a trade-off people want to make, and that’s fine. We just want to make sure people understand that. 

So, those are the disadvantages and advantages. In one you get a score but there’s some issues involved. With the other, you get a report only. And so, it’s really something that any financial educator or consumer would have to determine is the best information for them as long as they fully understand what they’re doing. 

Do you want to add to that, Maria?

Maria Jaramillo:	I think that makes sense. And just that annualcreditreport.com is where consumers should go to get their free credit report. And be aware that other services might say it’s free access to the report, but they might require you to enter personal information and therefore these companies might market to you later on. 

But annualcreditreport.com is a free service that consumers are entitled to use to receive free credit report. 

Irene Skricki:	Great. Okay. We are just about out of time. I want to just mention one other thing. Somebody raised something about scores used for employment purposes. We do have something called a specialty credit reporting list on our website, which will allow in addition to the three credit bureaus that people hear about a lot that we’ve talked about, there are also a whole bunch of other credit bureaus that have credit reports that you have the right to request one free a year same as for the "big three" as we call them. And for those, some specialize in producing reports for employers. Some for rental apartment or other purposes for rentals. And you do have the right to request reports from those.   	      

If you go to our website and  use the search function to get to "specialty credit reports," there is a directory of those and with information on how to contact those to get those reports. That would be an option if someone is concerned about what’s on your report related to that an employer might see or whatnot, you can do that. 

We’re going to wind up now because we are out of time. Again, lots of great questions and information. If you want a copy of the PowerPoint or if you have other questions or want to sign up for FinEx -- which I encourage folks to do, if they haven’t already -- or if you have questions that we didn’t get to today and you want to send them on to me and I can see if I can get them answered internally or pass them on to Sarah, that address again is CFPB_FinEx F-I-N-E-X at CFPB.gov CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. That is also up on the final screen there. 

You can also on our website, that email address does appear on the Adult Financial Education Page. So, you should be able to reach me through that. I monitor that box, so I’ll get anything you send there. And be happy to send that out to you. 

And again, thank you so much. There’s been lots of great questions and lots more I wish we were able to get to. There’s clearly a lot of interest in this topic. We’re thrilled. We hope people do look at our information, look at some of the resources we mentioned -- the web portal on credit reports and scores, the company list for those who want to explore whether they may be able to get a score from their credit card company. And I want to thank very much the speakers Maria and Liane and also Sarah Chenven from Credit Builders Alliance. This has been great. Thank you very much and we’re going to end now. 

Coordinator:	That concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time. Speakers, allow a moment of silence and stand by for your post-conference. 


END
NWX-CFPB HQ 
04-27-17/1:00pm CT
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