What does Credit bureau mean?

A credit bureau is firm that catalogs and eventually sells information concerning the payment patterns of customers and relays credit reports with the related information. It is a company that collects, analyzes stores, summarizes, and then sells the information to whoever requested the investigation of the specific individual or firm. The agency basically researches and organizes the credit information and makes it public for a fee to creditors, in order to enable them to make a decision on granting or denying loans. A credit bureau’s usual clients include credit card companies, mortgage lenders, banks and other financing institutions.

It is not the credit bureau’s job to decide whether a person or company qualifies for a loan or not. Its only objective is t collect the credit information that it deems relevant to a individual’s credit habits and credit history, then reports the findings to the firm that entrusted it. In the United States the three most important credit bureaus are Trans Union, Experian and Equifax. Credit bureaus have other common names, such as credit reporting agency or consumer reporting agency.