How to read your credit report
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BLUEPRINT
Published 11:43 a.m. UTC April 11, 2023
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Like it or not, your credit report can impact your life in many ways. It’s the basis for your credit scores and can affect which loans or credit cards you can get and the interest rates you’ll receive. In some states, your credit report can even affect your insurance premiums and job prospects.
Considering the importance of your credit report, you should regularly review it. But before you do, it can be helpful to have a high-level understanding of what a credit report is and what you might find.
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¹$1,000,000 Identity Theft Insurance for Eligible Losses: Identity Theft Insurance underwritten by insurance company subsidiaries or affiliates of American International Group‚ Inc.. The description herein is a summary and intended for informational purposes only and does not include all terms, conditions and exclusions of the policies described. Please refer to the actual policies for terms, conditions, and exclusions of coverage. Coverage may not be available in all jurisdictions.
No one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions effectively.
What is a credit report?
Your credit report offers a detailed look at your history of borrowing and repaying money. The three bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — have huge databases filled with information about consumers that they receive from other companies, such as lenders, credit card issuers and collection agencies.
When someone requests your credit report, the credit bureau can search its database for all the relevant records to create a single document. Depending on how long you’ve used credit and how many credit accounts you have, your credit report might be a couple — or a couple of dozen — pages long.
How to get your credit report
Many organizations will give you access to your credit report after pulling it and you have the right to a free copy of your credit report from each credit bureau at least once every 12 months.
An easy and free option is to request your credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com — the official site for requesting your free annual credit report. Since the onset of the pandemic, the credit bureaus now offer free credit reports weekly (rather than annually), a change that was made permanent in Sept. 2023.
You can also visit each of the bureaus’ websites — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — to request copies of your credit report. There are other companies that offer free or paid access to your credit reports, although which bureau they pull from will vary.
What’s in a credit report?
A credit report generally has personal information about a person, their history with different types of credit and collection accounts, bankruptcy filings, and records of when the credit report was checked.
Your credit report is often broken into several distinct sections:
- Personal information: This could include your name, aliases, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, employment history and Social Security number. However, some organizations might leave off your Social Security number or only include the last four digits to help protect your identity.
- Credit accounts: Each of your credit accounts, including loans and credit cards. There might be a summary of the account with basic information, such as the creditor’s name, the date you opened the account, the type of account and its current status. Then a detailed breakdown of your account’s payment history.
- Collection accounts: Past-due accounts can be sent or sold to collections, which could appear on your credit report. The collection account will list the amount you owe and the original creditor, along with other relevant information.
- Public records: Bankruptcy filings from the last seven to 10 years are the only public records that appear in credit reports. But liens and judgments were also part of credit reports until 2018.
- Inquiries: A credit inquiry is a record of when someone checked your account. Your credit report might contain hard inquiries — when someone checks your report before making a credit decision. Hard inquiries can affect your credit scores. You may also see other types of inquiries, sometimes labeled soft, promotional, or account review inquiries. These inquiries don’t affect your scores, which is why checking your own credit report doesn’t impact your credit score.
The exact names and the order of the sections in your credit report can vary depending on where you get a copy of your report. You might also find that your credit accounts are separated into sections for accounts that are open and in good standing, accounts that are current or have had late payments and closed accounts.
What’s not in your credit report
First, your credit score isn’t part of your credit report and it won’t always be included. For example, your reports from AnnualCreditReport.com don’t come with credit scores. However, many companies that give you access to one of your credit reports also choose to include a credit score based on that report. The specific type of score can vary, but it’s generally a FICO or VantageScore credit score.
Additionally, a lot of information never appears in your credit report, including:
- Your income.
- Your bank account balances and net worth.
- Your race, sex, gender, education and religious or political affiliations.
- Medical records or disabilities.
- Non-bankruptcy public records, such as liens or arrest records.
Because this information isn’t in your credit report, it won’t affect your credit scores. However, creditors might ask you about some of it, such as your income, which could be an important factor in their decision. But it’s against the law for creditors to make discriminatory credit decisions based on certain information, such as someone’s race, color, or sex.
What might be in your credit report
Some organizations are trying to expand access to credit and help people improve their credit by adding payments to credit reports that traditionally aren’t part of your credit history.
These can include rent, utility and phone payments — bills that many people pay but haven’t gotten “credit” for in the past. If you’re using one of these programs, such as Experian Boost or eCredable, it might only add these accounts to one of your credit reports.
You’ll also find that closed accounts can stay on your credit report and affect your credit scores. These include paid-off collection accounts and settled debts.
Accounts that were in good standing when they were closed or paid off will be removed after 10 years. But negative marks, such as late payments, generally fall off your report after seven years. One exception are Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings, which can stay for 10. The credit bureaus remove credit inquiries after two years.
Reading your credit report
As you go through your credit report, keep an eye out for any information that looks inaccurate or unfamiliar.
Errors can happen when someone steals your identity and applies for credit in your name. You’ll want to act quickly to shut down the fraudulent accounts. Call the listed creditor to inform them about the fraudulent account and report the identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) using IdentityTheft.gov to get a personalized recovery plan and an FTC Identity Theft Report.
But an error could also be the result of a company misreporting information and it could be hurting your credit score. In particular, pay attention to the credit accounts and collections sections. You want to make sure the accounts and their balances, credit limits and payment history are correct, as those can have a major impact on your credit scores.
But don’t be surprised if your current account balance is different from the balance on your credit report. Creditors often only send updates to credit bureaus once a month and your current balance might have changed since the last update.
You may also want to review all three of your credit reports separately. It’s common for there to be differences because creditors won’t always check all three of your reports, which can lead to inquiries only appearing on one or two. And some creditors don’t report your open accounts to all three bureaus. But you can compare the details of accounts that appear in multiple reports.
How to dispute errors on your credit report
If you find an error in your credit report, you can file a dispute directly with the credit bureau or with the company that reported the error to the bureau.
The easiest way to start a dispute with the bureaus is online via the websites for Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Depending on the system and what you’re disputing, you may need to upload additional documents to verify your identity and prove that there’s an error. You may need to file the disputes with each bureau separately if the error appears on all three of your reports.
Generally, the bureau has to investigate your dispute within 30 days. Depending on the results of the investigation, the information might be updated, deleted, or verified as accurate. Even if the information is updated or deleted from your credit report, continue reviewing your credit reports and make sure the error doesn’t get reinserted.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Your credit accounts may be the most important thing in your credit report because they’ll have a strong impact on your credit scores. However, you want to review your entire credit report for errors that could be hurting your credit score or indicate that someone stole your identity.
FICO is a company that creates credit scores, most notably the widely used FICO score, which has several variations. However, other companies also create credit scores, such as VantageScore. Creditors can choose which credit score to use.
You can get free copies of your credit reports from each of the three main consumer credit reporting bureaus through AnnualCreditReport.com or directly from each of the credit bureaus. Other organizations may also have free or paid programs that include access to one or more of your credit reports.
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