Individual Credit Report

The main function of a credit report company is to act as the primary depository, and to maintain records of all credits and collections. It is also the responsibility of the credit report company to keep tracks of all the payments made, as well as legal information about different businesses and customers. As a matter of fact, the diverse records maintained by these credit report companies are sold to lenders and credit donators whenever a commercial organization or a customer makes an application for credit.

Today, each and every country across the world have credit report companies by different names such as Credit Reporting Agency, Consumer Reporting Agency, Credit Bureaus, etc. The significance or necessity for a country to have such an organization is that as soon as buying with credit begins acting as a replacement to cash as the main form of currency for purchasing expensive commodities, the economy of that country becomes all the more dynamic and prosperous in nature.

There are certain general functions performed by a credit report company, irrespective of the country in which it is situated. These functions are stated below:

• For a credit report company to operate properly it first gets acquainted with the financial history about the person or the commercial organization concerned.
• A credit reporting agency carefully preserves personal information regarding their clients, like their:
  • present and former names (applicable mostly in case of business firms) and residential/commercial addresses
  • social security numbers
  • present employers (in case of individual businessman)
• The credit bureaus are fully acquainted with all financial information regarding their clients, including the details about those bills whose payments are pending.
• The credit bureaus are fully acquainted with all financial information regarding their clients, including the details about those bills whose payments are pending.
• The consumer reporting agencies are responsible for preserving records related to tax liens, which include liens on state levels. The credit report companies keep tracks of the commercial organizations or individuals who recently inquired about their credit report files.
• All information regarding a client's financial liquidation or debts are gathered and considered by the credit report companies prior to the preparation of credit reports.
• Both revolving and installment loans of a client are taken into account by his/her credit report company while preparing credit reports. It finds out the name of the credit issuers who are related with the client's social security number, and the date of the issuance of credit.

Following are names of a handful of credit report companies, of international recognition and repute:

• Experian
• Dun and Bradstreet Corp.
• Equifax
• Trans Union

All of these companies are based in the United States of America.