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Keeping you in the know!

Have you ever had a credit card company suddenly lower your credit line in spite of your unblemished payment history?

Have you wondered how every mortgage lender in the world is aware that you have been shopping for a good refinance opportunity? Or why your current mortgagee, the company that didn't spell your name right on last month's statement, is suddenly your new best friend? The answer is credit "triggers", a highly profitable sideline for all of the three credit collection bureaus and business financial analyst Dun & Bradstreet is also a player.

Lenders can subscribe to a trigger service with one or more credit bureaus. Depending on the parameters that subscriber chooses, and there are over a dozen to chose from. The subscriber would be instantly notified if there are changes in the credit profile of current customers. These triggers may be employed by subscribers as risk alerts, collections assistance and marketing opportunities.

In collections, for example , a triggering event might be a change in a person's or business's credit history such as a payoff of some delinquent debts that might indicate renewed liquidity or information on a new location for a missing debtor.

A risk alert trigger would be one that indicates that a customer is taking on substantial additional debt or begins to exhibit a pattern of late payments or even of minimum payments on a number of accounts. This is the type of trigger that can result in reduced or even closed credit lines or a sudden increase in interest rates.

Triggers have been available to lenders for years although new technology is morphing them into a totally new type of product, one that can be customized by combining a number of parameters and is available to subscibers almosy instantly. Experian permits a lender to submit a list of names, probably from it's current portfolio, to be monitored whenever a consumer is shopping for credit. Marketing, risk and retention triggers are now available on a daily, weekly, up to a quarterly cycle.

It is in the marketing area that Experian at least has begun to strongly push its trigger products. While the marketing sector has been around for several years, the sales targets have changed and that could be disconcerting, particularly to the consumer shopping for a mortgage.

The Credit bureaus have provided trigger service to mortgage companies for some time; and the throes of the refinancing frenzy this was a popular product. If a company wanted to know if a customer was seeking additional creditt in order to approach him or her and attempt to retain the mortgage business themselves through a refinance or to cross-sell other products such as mortgage insurance or credit cards, it would be very easy to say the least.

The credit bureaus are now offering the trigger services to all mortgage companies. In other words, they are selling mortgage trigger leads.

Experian promotes its products on its websites blatantly: "you can quickly and precisly find credit worthy customers with recent credit activity who are most likely to respond to your specific offer...and who are the kind of credit worthy customers you would like to attract."

In other words, if your mortgage cutomer is shopping around to refinance, we will alert you so you can take action to retain that business. And we will also notify you if a stranger who meets your parameters of location, credit score, etc. appears to be seeking financing.

Perhaps the borrowe will get a better deal - in the words of the Lending tree ad - "when banks compete you win." But there are a couple of troubling aspects. First of all, the lender who is initially seeking your business is paying for the credit report that triggers the trigger puttinh his very own mortgage lead on the open market to be sold as a credit trigger lead for profit to his competitors. Second, it is yet another in the endless examples of how an individual's privacy is ignored everyday...?

The law requires that anyone contacting a consumer from such a lead do so with a firm offer of credit.

"Please allow us to be your new friend in th mortgage business"

Our goal is to educate the consumer on one of the largest purchases they will ever make!