Free Credit Report: Importance of Monitoring the Credit Report

Credit report is important for any borrower. It is more so when they have any problem in the credit status. Sometimes, their credit report is stained due to irregularity in repayment behavior which brings down the credit score below 600 marks as per FICO. Everyone knows that the lenders turn down the loan application of such people. This is why the borrowers should try to find if their credit report has been prepared properly. There is no problem in accessing to the credit report, because free credit report is available. The borrowers can secure a copy of their credit report free of cost, of course, once in a year, and of course, by the strength of the law of the land. The borrowers can also find their credit report through the search engine on the internet and they need not spend a cent for this.

They can approach the financial bureaus, (especially, Experian, Equifax and Trans Union) which create the credit report. These financial bureaus collect accounts of the financial transactions of the individual borrower from several lending agencies. The credit report that they create displays creditworthiness of the borrower. When a borrower gets his/her free credit report he/she can go through details of receipts and payments of the earlier six years.

It happens, sometimes, that there are mistakes in the credit report prepared by the staff of the financial bureaus. Mistakes occur due to wrong entries made by the staff when they work with the documents of receipts and payments. Sometimes, value of a person ‘A’ is entered wrongly for another person ‘B’. Result to which the bureaus thus reach is found to be away from the right one.

If a borrower finds that there are wrong entries or mistakes in his/her free credit report, he/she must contact the financial bureaus and get the errors rectified. It is the duty of the bureaus to correct the mistakes and prepare a fresh credit report. The bureaus must send a copy of the corrected credit report to the borrower concerned and to the finance providers whom the borrower has contacted for the last one year.

The free credit report received after rectification may show that credit status of the borrower has improved. It is also possible that there is no mistake in the credit report of a borrower. In that case, he/she can take measures to improve the credit record in near future.