Credit scores are kind of a big deal. That’s kind of a universal fact. A good score can be the difference maker for many people of whether they get a loan or, if they do, what kind of interest they will have to pay.
Equifax is one of the big three credit giants that report credit scores to lending institutions, and they admitted to a mistake that affected an awful lot of people.
Equifax is blaming a “coding issue” that came from a change to one of their servers, and because of that, incorrect credit scores were sent to lenders of millions of consumers.
Most affected people did not suffer a significant hit; however, around 300,000 consumers had a differential of about 25 points reported to lenders. They may have been wrongfully denied credit or issued loans with much higher interest rates.
Here’s a quote from the company in the release sent to the media regarding the error.
“We do not take this issue lightly.”
According to a CNN report, Freddie Mac sent its clients an alert on June 1 saying Equifax informed them that roughly 12% of credit scores released to them from mid-March to early April could have been incorrect.
In timing that many people might consider interesting, Equifax’s disclosure of this news occurred just after the board of directors approved a $25 million retention bonus package for CEO Mark Begor.
Almost every American has their credit history by Equifax, and they sell that info to banks.
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