The blog explains how they will access "Utility, phone and rent payments", but does not explain how they would access other alternative data listed:
- Income and expenses
- Checking and savings account balances
- Debit and credit card transactions
I am now aware of any service that will provide information like that to potential lenders and the blog does not explain how FICO would get that information. It's actually quite scary that some of this would be saved and tracked by a 3rd party.
@ISOgoodTacos wrote:Some of these lesser known bureaus might already be collecting or working on collecting that kind of information.
CFPB List of consumer reporting companies
Thanks for that link and helpful, but looking there I don't see anyone collecting information with the details called out in this blog. Specifically, nobody appears to be collecting:
- Income and expenses
- Checking and savings account balances
- Debit and credit card transactions
Granted employment screening may include salary, but it won't show all of my income and deifnitely not all my expenses. The details on the balances of my bank accounts plus the specifics on my debit and credit card transactions are particularly alarming.
@Elizabeth_FICO, thank you for sharing this. I'm not excited about alternative data. On the other hand, there's not enough education or discussion about the alternative credit agencies. They are scary, especially when an individual is a victim of identity theft as these organizations are sometimes leveraged by fraudsters to get access to their services that fly under the radar of the big three CRA. Consumers have minimal recourse if there are errors and there are at least 52 of them per the CFPB in 2022.
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@Credit12Fico wrote:Your "EWS" report contains info of checking and savings account balances and transactions if the bank you have reports to EWS (many of the big banks do).
Thank you, this has been very educational. I didn't know about this report and have another report to request/review!
"Early Warning Services" report is designed to prevent bank fraud, which appears to be a good thing. This is used when opening bank accounts. I would like to understand how FICO XD would access, store, and score this data for lenders. IMO it's a fairly significant leap to go from accessing this data for opening a bank account to getting it applying for credit. The more access to any data increases the risk that the data will be compromised.
@TheKid2 - I couldn't agree with you more. I don't see why FICO should monitor my opening bank accounts. The big 3 aren't protecting our information enough as it stands, e.g., think data breaches and how it's been reported that others can unfreeze your credit reports.