As part of the National Consumer Assistance Plan that becomes effective July 1, credit bureaus Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are expected to reduce the amount of tax lien and civil judgment information they report on consumer credit files.
After that date, the bureaus will only report tax lien and civil debt information on consumers when four areas of personally identifiable information (PII) are present, including name, Social Security number, birth date and address.
A preliminary analysis conducted by Experian shows that approximately 96% of civil judgment public record data will no longer be included on credit reports.
What’s more, almost 50% of tax lien information will not meet the PII criteria.
FICO has found that roughly 12 million Americans’ credit scores will increase based upon this change.
This is important news for mortgage lenders and servicers, as it will be harder for them to obtain tax lien and civil judgment information.
To help out with this situation, Credit Plus Inc. has added a Public Record Gap Report to its FraudPlus solution.
The company claims it is the first in the industry to offer this necessary information and will begin testing the report on April 1.
“Lenders can rest assured that they can still obtain this critical information from Credit Plus and fill in the gap created from information that will soon be missing from credit reports,” says Greg Holmes, national director of sales and marketing at Credit Plus, in a release. “At Credit Plus, we are all about helping mortgage professionals make more informed lending decisions, and this new tool is another way to accomplish that.”