I am looking for market data on the U.S. credit report industry.
Specifically how many credit reports (number and dollar revenues) are
sold directly to consumers (on or offline) via the three major U.S.
credit bureaus,Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian and by major
resellers such as
TrueCredit.com, Myfico.com, ConsumerInfo.com, Cendant, and so on.

Also, how many U.S. consumer subscribe to credit report monitoring
services such as PrivacyGuard from Cendant.

I do NOT want the volume of reports sold to financial institutions to
use in evaluating a credit applications.

Need numbers and dollars and data sources. 

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by pythagoras-ga on 24 May 2002 08:06 PDT

Dear Sir,

I have some information, but i am afraid it will maybe not enough to
satisfy your question.
*I know how many reports are sold, in total.
also the revenues in dollars. And figures from 1990-2000 
These information have i found in a study. 
*I have also a site where you can buy information about the U.S.
credit report industry.
*I can't find specific information per business.(Equifax,...)
and not how many consumers subscribe to...

Kind Regards,

Pythagoras

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Clarification of Question by jimbr-ga on 24 May 2002 09:26 PDT

I am not interested in total industry credit report sales, 99.9% of
those are sold to financial institutions and lenders for use in
evaluating credit applications.

I am only interested in the 0.1% and growing portion of the industry
being sold directly to consumers.

Thanks.

Dear sir,

I have already asked a clarification. Because i am not sure about my
answer, I will give it for free, if it satify your question, you can
still reward me, thanks.

This is the introductory Paragraph: 

"There are 1,600 credit reporting agencies and 5,500 credit
collections agencies in the US, with combined annual revenues of about
$10 billion. Credit reporting and collections agencies operate at
opposite ends of an industry that supports over $6 trillion in
consumer debt (including $4 billion of mortgages), $1 trillion in
commercial bank loans, and $1.5 trillion in commercial accounts
receivable. Consolidation in the banking, utilities, telecom, and
healthcare industries in recent years means that there are fewer, but
larger, customers for collections agencies. The three main types of
collection services that agencies offer are contingency fee
collections, portfolio purchasing, and receivables outsourcing.
Successful collections agencies have invested heavily in computer
technology and telecommunications infrastructure, and are now
leveraging that technology base to provide telemarketing services to
customers. Outsourcing the entire receivables function is becoming
more popular among many companies. Where companies used to turn to
collections agencies only as a final resort, they may now use the
expertise of collections agencies to manage their entire receivables
function."

The full report can you buy on the site:
http://www.accountingweb.com/firstres/free/creditparagraph.htm

A free report about credit reports can you read in the pdf file, it is
maded by the university of Berlin(Germany).

http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~jentzsch/privacypaper.pdf

Interesting is the appendix(at the end) with his graphics about:
--->Credit Reports sold in the U.S. (annually)(1990 – 2000)
--->Credit Reporting and Collection Agencies in the U.S.(1970 – 2000)

There are also many good references to books and sites!

Kind Regards

Pythagoras

Thanks for your work. But you are right, it doesn't help me in
quantifying the subset of the industry I am interested in.

Did you receive my two answers?

Bob

According to the Wall Street Journal (8/6/02, page D2 - "cranky
consumer")

"Americans will buy six million (credit reports) this year, almost
double last years sales"

So thats 3MM in 2001, and 6MM in 2002.  At an average $15/report
(that's my guess, an average of $9 for single and $35 for 3-in-1
reports), this would put the market at $45MM in 2001 and $90MM in
2002, a small market but one in high-growth mode.

Market share is currently dominated by Fair Issac and the three Credit
Unions, plus ConsumerInfo (owned by Experian), of course