Experian Allows Cell Phone Bill Reporting

[Anonymous]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/12/18/how-boost-credit-score-experian-new-tool/2349887002/

Here is an article on Experian changes in 2019

[Anonymous]

XtraCredit ... thanks for the information! Sure could help some people. The one thing I saw of concern is Experian obtains your permission to access your bank accounts to glean the necessary information. As well as the credit bureaus have done on keeping our information private it is one more possible for a leak. On the flip side, it is all out there already

[Anonymous]

Oh, I'm not opting in for any of this! I just wanted to share for anyone else who may be interested.
I like to give out as little info as possible and will just keep plugging along the way that I have been.
For some though, this may be an option.

[Andypanda]

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@Anonymous wrote:
XtraCredit ... thanks for the information! Sure could help some people. The one thing I saw of concern is Experian obtains your permission to access your bank accounts to glean the necessary information. As well as the credit bureaus have done on keeping our information private it is one more possible for a leak. On the flip side, it is all out there already

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What about those of us that pay our credit card via Credit card?

[Anonymous]

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@Andypanda wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
XtraCredit ... thanks for the information! Sure could help some people. The one thing I saw of concern is Experian obtains your permission to access your bank accounts to glean the necessary information. As well as the credit bureaus have done on keeping our information private it is one more possible for a leak. On the flip side, it is all out there already

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What about those of us that pay our credit card via Credit card?

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AndyP has hit on something.  He may have meant "What about those of us who pay their utilities via a credit card?"  (That would be most of us here, for example, and many people who know nothing about credit as well.)  A close reading of the piece makes it clear that the new EX Boost tool is intended to add utilities and that it assumes that these are paying paid directly out of one's bank account.  From that article...

You first give Experian permission to access your online bank accounts, so it can identify utility and telecom payments and add them to your credit history. You confirm the data is correct and then it’s added. A new credit score is instantly generated.

For the many folks who pay their utilities via a CC, Boost would not help -- unless EX expands it to be able to reach into your CC statements and identify payments made there too.

It's also unclear to me how Boost would identify whether a person has been late on a payment.  It seems like you'd need to turn over a lot of info to EX and that Boost would need to be doing a lot of work in the background: pulling each utility's monthly statement, pulling the date on which that statement is due (remember this can change), comparing that with the date that the payment was made from your bank and whether you paid in full, etc.

[Anonymous]

@Dixie from what I've been hearing this is something geared more toward those without much credit, so they are usually paying from the6ban accounts and have no real established 'credit' history, which is why they will look to bank history as an alternative.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous from what I've been hearing this is something geared more toward those without much credit, so they are usually paying from the6ban accounts and have no real established 'credit' history, which is why they will look to bank history as an alternative.

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You are absolutely right.  These kinds of efforts (whether by CRAs or scoring companies like FICO) are in a way nothing new.  A new story about something like that has been cropping up a couple times a year for the last four years or so.  When you look at them closely it's clear that the new approach is designed for people who have no credit accounts (or almost no accounts) on their traditional report and who have been paying their bills directly from their bank accounts.

These efforts are designed to reach unscorable people.  I am skeptical about the claim made below:

Jeff Softley, chief marketing officer of Experian consumer products, received a 28-point boost after using the platform. Before, he only had four accounts in his credit history history – “an incomplete credit profile” as he called it –  but was able to add another six accounts including his water, phone and electric bill payments.

Remember, he's the marketing officer, so it's in his interest to spin Boost as an amazing thing that can help almost anybody.  The idea of a top level executive at Experian having four accounts is right there dubious, and I note that he doesn't specify the scoring model that gave him this 28 boost -- he'll naturally quote the one that helped him the most, even if it is Vantage rather than say FICO 8.

On the other hand, I expect that Boost could be a big help to someone who (a) has been paying his bills via his bank account for many years and (b) has only recently decided to explore getting credit cards.  In that case having a few old tradelines being added would be helpful.

[Andypanda]

I ment Cell phone. Personnly I pay my cell phone (verizon) and my packaged combo of internet, uverse and land land (AT&T) with credit card. electricty, gas and county utities I pay though Wells fgargo Bill Pay. With the last 3 the surgchase for paying via credit card is higher then any reward I would get for paying by credit card.

Andy

[Anonymous]

If the Cell phone Company likes to do HP just to open the account, the least tey can do is report it to CRA as account good standing. After all, they also wouldn't hesitate to report a delinquency. lol

I don't feel that a CRA should need access to bank accounts though. 

[Anonymous]

I saw somewhere that there is a new FICO model being released that takes in to account your bank account balances. Is this true?