According to updated findings from Experian and Oliver Wyman, strategic defaulters, who are defined as remaining delinquent for six months after the initial date of delinquency, continued as a high percentage of all mortgage delinquencies at 19 percent in the second quarter of 2009.Read more

Experian, the global information services company, has announced the launch of CreditHorizons for Securities, a data-feed product that provides the missing link to understanding the true creditworthiness of the underlying borrowers in each mortgage deal. CreditHorizons for Securities consists of anonymized U.S.Read more

Effective April 1, 2010 mortgage brokers and mortgage net branch companies will have new requirements to fulfill before they sign up with a credit reporting agency to access credit reports. All mortgage brokers and net branch companies with access to mortgage credit reports that contain Experian credit data (which is currently all credit reports for mortgage purposes due to the repositories’ own requirements) will need to be re-valuated by their current credit report provider to assure compliance with the new requirements. This is mandatory to continue to receive credit reports.Read more

Beginning April 2, advertising for “free credit reports” will require new disclosures to help consumers avoid confusing “free” offers--which often require consumers to spend money on credit monitoring or other products or services--with the no-strings-attached credit reports available at AnnualCreditReport.com, or (877) 322-8228.Read more

The last few years were full of “change” for our industry, but thankfully, credit scoring hasn’t been one of them. “What” you say? “But I read somewhere that scores were completely different now. What is going on?” Since 2006, there have been many announcements about new scoring models that are competing for acceptance in the mortgage space. Quite a few entities need to put their seal of approval on a scoring model before we can use it, including the rating agencies, Wall Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the credit bureaus and our lenders.Read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it is lowering from $11 to $10.50 the maximum amount that consumer reporting agencies are allowed to charge consumers for an extra copy of their credit report. The Commission announced the reduction in the amount from 2009 to 2010 under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires the FTC each year to revise the cap originally set by statute based on the change in the Consumer Price Index. The fee is rounded to the nearest .50 cents.Read more

Experian, a global information services company, has announced its suite of leading “ability to pay” products—Income Insight and Income View—designed to be the definitive source for determining consumers’ ability to pay. Income Insight is a unique product designed to support recent legislation by providing an estimate of a borrower’s individual income utilizing verified income data and proprietary credit bureau attributes.Read more