This spring, Equifax sent millions of customers applying for home and auto loans with incorrect credit scores, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
One of the three largest credit reporting companies in the U.S., Equifax provides consumers with financial information and scores that influence whether people are approved for products such as mortgages, credit cards and auto loans, as well as the interest rates they pay. Most credit ratings range from 300 to 850, with consumers with higher scores getting better terms.
This Magazine Millions of Americans were affected by the Equifax error, with some scores changing by as much as 20 points in either direction — enough to get some potential borrowers denied loans, the report said. According to the paper, a few people went from no credit score to 700 and vice versa. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said the erroneous scores were sent to banks including Ally Financial, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
encoding problem
in a statement Equifax says on its website that it has fixed the bug, calling it an “encoding issue.”
“We know businesses and consumers rely on our data, and Equifax takes this technical coding issue very seriously. We can confirm that the issue has been resolved and we have been working closely with our customers on analysis to best serve consumers’ needs ” the company said.
Equifax also said the underlying credit report information has not changed. “[T]The vast majority of scores did not change over the three-week period in this question,” the company said. “For those consumers who did experience score changes, preliminary analysis suggests that only a minority of them may have received a different credit decision. “
The news was previously National Mortgage Professionals, an industry publication, May. Equifax CEO Mark Begor admitted the mistake at a financial conference in June.
“We had a coding issue that was a mistake our tech team made in one of our legacy applications that caused some scores to have erroneous data. We fixed that,” he told attendees, according to the grades single event.
Begor added that the company is working with affected consumers, noting, “We think the impact will be very small and not meaningful to Equifax.”
Equifax has previously participated 2017 Data Breach exposed sensitive information of nearly 150 million Americans and led to The company’s then-CEO was ousted. Equifax paid $700 million in fines and damages following the breach.
