PBRC, NCRA Release New Credit Protocols

Payment Reporting Builds Credit, a national credit bureau based in Annapolis, Md., and the National Credit Reporting Association have released new protocols for manually verifying credit applicants' identity and bill payment accounts and histories. The new procedures include safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest and to audit members' compliance, the organizations said. PBRC said only trade line histories that have been manually verified using the new procedures will be incorporated in PRBC's credit data repository and its credit reports. "For some time, mortgage and some auto lenders have considered rent and utility payment histories to assess creditworthiness and price loans when borrowers lacked traditional credit histories," said Michael Nathans, PRBC's founder. "But the collection and verification of such trade line data has been inconsistent, un-monitored, and un-scored. As a result, we have been told by secondary-market investors and mortgage insurers that the repayment performance of loans approved using this data has varied widely from lender to lender and that data quality is the suspected cause." PBRC can be found online at http://www.pbrc.com.