When looking through your latest credit report, you may find that each credit bureau may report different scores. Not only that, if you look even closer, it may even report different balance amounts for lines of credit. So what exactly is happening here?

Depending on when and where you grab your credit report, it may only show what is available at that current moment. Many factors go into building a credit report from someone’s credit history. Lenders and furnishers need to report to the credit bureaus and the credit bureaus have to compile that information and give it out when an inquiry is made, but different bureaus might get information from the various lenders at different points.

Each credit bureau will also view what’s reported by the creditors and may interpret that information differently from one another. What all of this boils down to is that creditors may report different information at different times throughout any given month, since all of this information is usually reported on a monthly cycle. However, credit bureaus will not sync up their reporting, which is the reason why the same account may show different information.

For example, a credit card company may report a balance update to the credit bureaus, but it will do so at different times of the month for each bureau. Another scenario is that the bureaus themselves might update that information once a month as well. All of this together will make it show different information between the credit bureaus. A high-balance credit card may not update until 15 to 45 days later.

Another factor that goes into the discrepancies between the credit bureaus is that not every creditor or lender will report to all three credit bureaus. Credit card companies and loan companies need to pay a small amount to report their credit information to the bureaus, so smaller lenders may only report to one or two credit bureaus instead of all three bureaus. This is common with newer lenders or online-only lenders.

The last reason that three credit bureaus may report differently is that hard inquiries may only go to a single credit bureau instead of all three. A hard inquiry is when a lender or creditor looks into your credit history, which impacts your credit score by up to five points.

With all these factors in place, a credit report may not show the most updated information available and may differ from one another, but the most important information that comes from the three credit scores is the mean or average between them.

If you have false or misleading information on your credit report or want to know more about how to improve your credit score, contact us at Fix Your Credit Consulting. Call us at (877) 212-2450 for a FREE CONSULTATION. We are a team of credit professionals that can help you get that loan or credit card to improve your financial situation. We are happy to answer any questions you may have about your credit history.

If you want to improve your credit score in other ways, call us at Fix Your Credit Consulting at (877) 212-2450 for a free consultation.

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