Net 30 Blog

“Commercial credit bureaus you are officially on notice”

March 17th, 2010 by Alex Coté

I’ve been on the road the last several weeks attending a combination of user groups and industry events in the US and in the UK. And what is striking is how credit professionals react so similarly across countries and industries when it comes to their frustrations with the current state of business information.

For example, in London, I spoke to a group of senior credit professionals about how the use of today’s social and web technologies are impacting the business credit profession. I expected (and got) a lively debate. For these types of conversations turned debates, I always start with: Who here, for business, uses Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Hands go up with Twitter being the smallest and LinkedIn being the largest. Then I ask the simple question – who uses business credit reports? Everyone raises their hands. Now, who uses Google AFTER you pull a credit report to get more information about that business? All the hands in the room go up.

After several stories were shared about the how the free search actually revealed better insights, one comment caught me off guard. It was from perhaps the most senior person in the room in terms of industry experience, who shot out this: “Commercial credit bureaus, you are officially on notice – this is all going to be free one day, and we won’t be having this debate. There is going to be a better way. There has to, it’s only a matter of time.”

Back in the states, in New Jersey at a user group, I asked the same series of questions and got the exact same response. This time I’m interrupted by one credit manager with: “Who actually likes their current provider [he named the bureau]? Who thinks the data is up to date or accurate?” The whole room erupts into rants about how unreliable the information is for them. It’s not exactly a good sign when no one has anything good to say about their PAID information providers. This is especially rough to hear when you are one of the credit bureaus.

I then traveled to the Credit Research Foundation in San Diego and every conversation I have goes about the same – credit professionals are tired of the status quo. Over and over I heard from them that they are looking for something new.

I couldn’t agree more. Doing things the way we always have is broken. And it has always been broken. Only 10,000 businesses in the US contribute to commercial credit bureaus, yet there are 25 million businesses in the US – something is wrong with this picture.

We clearly need to do better. And while I think (shameless plug) that Cortera represents a significant step in the right direction. It’s only part of the giant leap we are encouraging the industry – and ourselves — to take in the near future.

Have a story to share about how you use the best of the social and free web in your credit decisions? Startlingly bad data from a high priced credit report? Suggestions on what the future of business credit info? Tell us below.