[bigheadpercoli]

Don't understand why this is down-voted because it brings up a valid point.

The Financial Services sector is heavily regulated because of the importance of trust and correct information. You can bring the system to an immediate standstill since most of the automation in the sector relies heavily on credit bureau data.

I believe Amazon, Tesco, etc actually would hold now the most accurate information about customer repayment ability in the retail segment.

[otakucode]

Regarding the 'correct information' you mention... I have never had a very 'active' credit history, I just don't borrow a lot. But when I went to buy my house, I pulled my credit report to see what its status was and do a sanity check. When I did, I found an error. What surprised me is that it was an error that was false on its face. It was an impossible entry. To this day I am perplexed how such a thing could exist on a credit report at all without being caught by even the most basic data consistency checks. It claimed, roughly, that on say July 2000 I had a balance of $0 on an account with a furniture company... and 30 days later, on August 2000, I was more than 180 days overdue with a balance of -$300 with that same company. Given that it is quite difficult to pack more than 180 days into the span of 30 days, I can only conclude that they just accumulate errors and do not value either correctness or basic sensibility.

Luckily I was able to easily get the error removed, but it seems absurd to me that a clear system error of some kind had simply persisted on my report for years.