Questions about the fairness of the current credit reporting system have recently started to take new prominence with the National Consumer Law Center releasing a report The Credit Score Pandemic Paradox and Credit Invisibility and blog posts on Creditslips.org offering policy solutions in Addressing Credit Invisibility Through Federal Contracting Power. As the discussion there point out, this is a thorny issue since unreported bad credit may be worse for more people than having no credit reported.
Credit Invisibility also relates to Chapter 13 bankruptcy, as payments made by debtors during the course of their plan are usually unreported by creditors (including their ongoing mortgage payments). While many folks can get new mortgages and refinancing during bankruptcy at surprisingly low rates, that credit reporting purgatory leaves the same people stuck with subprime car loans for 5 years.
Chapter 13 Trustees could be authorized (and, to overcome institutional inertia, likely be required) to report payments, which would help debtors that were performing in the their plans tremendously. This would not only be a new burden and complexity for Trustee, but would also entail a sea change in how Trustees and the bankruptcy courts think about access for consumers to new credit during a bankruptcy. While Ch. 11 debtors routinely finance their way out of a case, the paternalism towards consumers often expects them to live for 3 to 5 years without credit.
A smaller lift would be to allow debtor's attorneys to report the repayment of their fees to the credit reporting agencies but lawyers are prohibited by the CRAs from furnishing information. When a Chapter 13 case is taken without payment of all fees in advance, i.e. most Chapter 13 cases, that lawyer is extending credit, the repayment of which over time should be considered as a sign of creditworthiness.
That my ethical obligations to my clients would prevent me from reporting negative information would not be prohibited under the FCRA, since that doesn't require any reporting, only accurate reporting. That the credit industry might find a consumer attorney only posting positive information is utterly hypocritical, since it makes the same reporting choices during bankruptcies as well.
Blog comments