Topics  |  Consumer Credit

As many as 70 million adults in the United States have no credit score or a limited credit history with the traditional credit bureaus. These consumers represent an important opportunity for lenders to access a new market. But without the ...

Federal regulators first required credit card disclosures in 1968 as a way to help consumers make better-informed decisions about using their cards. But several indicators suggest that disclosures have not been fulfilling their intended purpose. Revolving debt is up, ...

Cardholders who fail to make on-time payments and subsequently fall delinquent on their accounts not only jeopardize their own credit ratings but also cause financial losses for card issuers. To test whether early intervention, such as reminder calls, mailings, and ...

Faced with poor credit, many consumers find themselves borrowing from friends and family. CircleLending is a specialty loan administration company that has pioneered the market for managing private loans between relatives and friends. The company helps borrowers to access affordable ...

One important barrier for millions of individuals entering the credit market is that they have no file with one of the three major credit bureaus or a “thin-file” that makes it impossible to calculate a credit score. Commensurate with its ...

With consumer debt levels at an all-time high and the credit card and mortgage markets heavily saturated, the financial services industry has begun to turn its attention to the vast untapped pool of consumers who have minimal credit histories but ...

The Retail Financial Services Initiative (RFSI) is a three-year project organized by NCIF that seeks to increase the quantity and quality of financial services for unbanked and low- to moderate-income consumers. Starting in October 2003, a group of banks and ...

Developing effective methods of assessing risk is one of the most significant obstacles to banks and other lenders seeking to expand into underserved credit markets. Atlanta-based L2C is the first company to combine the breadth and depth of non-traditional data ...

An estimated 70 million Americans have either no credit score or a lower credit score than their financial history warrants. These consumers may have paid rent, a private mortgage, or other significant bills on time for years, but this information ...

Boston-based CircleLending broke new ground by developing a set of products and services to formalize and facilitate interpersonal loans between provate parties for business, mortgage, and basic loans. Click on the link above to download a PDF document of ...