Consumer Law

Not Everyone is Happy that the New CFPB Bill Will Give Denied Credit Applicants a Right to See Their Credit Score

By Jeff Sovern

by Jeff Sovern

Berin Michael Szoka of The Progress & Freedom Foundation has written The Dangerous Implications of a 'Right' to Free Credit Scores .  Here's the abstract:

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 2003, every American has a right to a free credit report once a year from each of the three major credit bureaus - Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. A search on any major search engine for "credit report" will lead the user (via the top search result) to AnnualCreditReport.com, which guides the user through getting these free reports after verifying their identity - a process that takes about 15 minutes. Having these reports empowers us all to take responsibility for verifying the accuracy of the borrowing history used to make assessments about our credit-worthiness, and also to detect fraud or identity theft. But for some lawmakers, this freebie isn't enough.

I was a little perplexed that the abstract doesn't provide any reason why free credit scores are a bad idea, so I had a quick look at the paper.  Szoka is concerned about something called "information socialism," which is the name Szoka gives to the idea that someone can create a score or algorithm or some such thing and the government can force them to turn it over to others without charge, thereby reducing the incentive to create new similar inventions that depend on information.  Szoka fears that this provision is the slippery slope bringing us closer to such a state generally.  Personally, I'm not persuaded that free credit scores will have the effects Szoka fears.  Even assuming that information socialism is a problem, the information here has already been paid for by the creditor who purchased it and used it to turn down the consumer's application. I would have been more worried that making credit scores available would facilitate gaming them to produce higher scores that don't actually reflect that someone is more creditworthy--except that since you've been able to buy your credit score for years from Fair Isaac, that bird has flown. 

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on July 08, 2010 (boomark / email).