How Many Credit Bureaus Are in the United States?

[10022016]

Equifax, Experian and Transunion; however...

[fused]

Innovis

[stw715]

Here is a list of Consumer Reporting Companies...

https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201604_cfpb_list-of-consumer-reporting-companies.pdf

[Goal810]

The question is, how did the big 3 get so big? Are they receiving special government support, or is there legislation that somehow benefits them at the expense of other credit bureaus?

[Anonymous]

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@Goal810 wrote:
The question is, how did the big 3 get so big? Are they receiving special government support, or is there legislation that somehow benefits them at the expense of other credit bureaus?

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Its time to bring bring back this classic post:  The History of Credit

[iv]

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@Goal810 wrote:
The question is, how did the big 3 get so big?

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The usual borg-style mergers and acquisitions, mostly.

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@Goal810 wrote:
Are they receiving special government support, or is there legislation that somehow benefits them at the expense of other credit bureaus?

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Yes. The requirements (from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) for effectively all standard mortgages include pulling a tri-merge report from the "big 3", and applying specific versions of the FICO score to each.

For all practical purposes, this is a government-enforced oligopoly (EQ/TU/EX) for the mortgage reporting market, and a government-enforced monopoly (FICO) for the mortgage scoring market.

There's also the special treatment of the "big 3" under FACTA that created annualcreditreport.com - although on one level, that's just a pragmatic approach to meeting the FACTA requirements, it also provides highly visible government re-enforcement of the "big 3" ...being the "big 3".