Stamford, CT – March 18, 2022: Earlier today, the three national credit reporting agencies (CRAs), Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, announced a joint industry measure to remove nearly 70% of medical collection debt accounts from consumer credit reports.
The CRAs also announced that effective July 1, 2022, they will no longer include paid medical collection debt on consumer credit reports and will extend the time for unpaid medical collection debt from six months to one year, giving consumers more time to work with insurance and/or healthcare providers to address their medical debt before it impacts their credit.
VantageScore applauds this decision and shares in the commitment to help consumers recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2013, VantageScore made the empirically-driven decision to become the first national credit scoring company to entirely eliminate medical collection accounts that have been paid off. Since then, the company has taken a number of additional steps to reduce the impact that medical debt has on a person’s credit score.
“This is a major win for consumers. Medical accounts are different from other consumer debt because they often arise from unforeseen circumstances and complicated, opaque insurance and healthcare provider billing practices,” said Silvio Tavares, President and CEO of VantageScore. “Based on empirical research, these types of debts and collections that have been paid off are often not as predictive of a consumer’s creditworthiness. This is why VantageScore was a pioneer in eliminating their impact in our credit models nearly a decade ago, and it is one reason why more than 2,200 financial institutions use our scores.”
Throughout its history, VantageScore has been an innovator in making credit scores more predictive, inclusive, and more equitable for consumers.
For more information on how VantageScore enables greater financial inclusion, fairness, and accuracy in credit modeling, please visit www.VantageScore.com.