Equifax

Equifax
Equifax was founded in the year 1899 as Retail Credit Company; its office is in Atlanta, Georgia and today is considered as one of the three big consumer credit rating agencies. Equifax performs the credit rating of people residing in the countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Spain, Italy, Peru, Chile and Uruguay. It has about 4,400 employees in 12 different countries and in the year 2006 had annual revenue of $1.3 billion.

It’s main competitors are Experian, Trans Union and The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. Like it’s business rivals, Equifax today market their credit report directly to the consumers along with the core responsibility of supplying reports to the potential creditors.

Equifax farms out most of its consumer relations. Any conflict or requests related to telephones are deviated to a Canadian company called ICT. Disputes and requests related to mails are diverted to the Georgia post office boxes where they are opened by the company, Innasource, scrutinized and stored in a computer file and then electronically sent to a subcontract vendor that is either in Jamaica, Montego Bay or Philippines. Besides, Equifax also outsources its software development projects offshore to India through the companies like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and CGI-AMS.

An interesting fact:
Retail Credit Company (that was what Equifax was earlier known as) received a huge criticism in the year 1970 for collecting “….facts, statistics, inaccuracies and rumors”. In fact it was condemned for gathering information about almost every phase of a person’s life including school, jobs, childhood and sex life. It was also alleged that the company was rewarding its employees for gathering negative information about consumers. There was a consent decree and in the year 1975 Retail credit became Equifax perhaps to counterbalance its tainted reputation.

From where does Equifax collect information?
Equifax gets all the information from all those companies which had granted credit to the person at some point of time and also with those with which one has his accounts. Each of these financial institutions furnishes a report of the person’s payment history to Equifax. These information sources are:
• Banks
• Retailers
• Various collection agencies
• The public records those are available with the courts all across the country.

What is FCRA and what are its functions?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act was first ordained in the year 1971; it was first amended in October 1997 and then again in December 2003. This act governs various credit reporting agencies like Equifax to ensure that they abide by certain reasonable procedures to gather correct information about a consumer. The law also specifies consumers’ right which includes a person’s right to know about his credit file and dispute if any incorrect information is recorded.

Some quick question & answers about Equifax:

When and where was Equifax born?
Formerly known as Retail Credit Company, Equifax Inc was first incorporated on 20th December, 1913 in Georgia.

When did Equifax go public?
Equifax’s stock began trading ‘over the counter’ in the year 1965 and it was listed in the New York Stock Exchange in 1971.

On which exchange is Equifax’s stock traded and what is the ticker symbol?
Equifax’s stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “‘EFX”.

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