How to take control of your Metro 2^® credit reporting and FCRA compliance

Major consumer credit bureaus expect data furnishers to report on their data in a single, standardized format, known as Metro 2®. While the Metro 2® standards are designed to make it easier to report updated credit information accurately, organizations still face challenges with measuring and maintaining their Metro 2® reporting data quality.

Businesses who struggle with Metro 2® guidelines face a manual, time-consuming data analysis process and may have a lack of resources to support the regulatory operation. Additionally, with the internet at their fingertips, consumers have become well-informed about their credit and disputes continue to occur.

The biggest ways poor data quality impacts organizations, according to our 2023 Research Report, includes:

• Business agility and the ability to adapt quickly to changing market conditions (43%)
• Inhibiting the ability to understand customers and deliver a personalized customer experience (41%)
• Wasting resources and adding additional costs (40%)
• Damaging the reliability in analytics (40%)

As a data furnisher, you might be looking for ways to ease the Metro 2^® reporting process. It’s time to take control of your data to comply with Metro 2^® formatting and remain FCRA compliant, focusing on these three areas:

1. Accuracy
2. Automation
3. Resourcefulness

Data accuracy

When data furnishers, like you, prepare their Metro 2® reporting files, it’s important that they be as accurate as possible. Incorrect data means inefficiencies across your processes which will negatively impact your resources and ability to quickly respond to customer dissatisfaction, disputes, media backlash, and regulators.

In the credit reporting lifecycle, as files are sent to the Credit Reporting Agencies (CRAs), the furnishers are receiving information in return to reconcile discrepancies and rejects, among other data points.  All this information can be overwhelming to manually aggregate, address, and appropriately update. More importantly, manually managing your data limits your ability to build risk controls. This is where automation becomes your best ally.

Data automation

Experian’s DataArc 360™ powered by Experian Aperture Data Studio is a data quality management tool that automates the data quality process to help data furnishers comply with credit reporting industry standards and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). This is a tool that helps your organization build risk controls.

DataArc 360™ is a powerful solution that removes manual processes and enables you to proactively manage your reporting analysis. It will flag any discrepancies against a pre-built set of rules and measure the results through an interactive dashboard where a user can even drill down to account level details for root cause analysis. In addition, furnishers can also run the analysis as often as desired to monitor trending statistics, as well as adapt or create new rules to enhance the process further.

With this ability, DataArc 360™ makes it easy to monitor consumer credit reporting and gives you confidence that a solid process is in place to enhance data accuracy.  The tool brings discovery in-house to address data quality concerns proactively while helping to reconcile any discrepancies post-submission from the CRAs.

Resourcefulness

DataArc 360™ can help you stay ahead of the game when it comes to your data integrity. The tool helps you make the most of your resources, allowing your staff to focus on more strategic efforts like understanding risk appetite and tolerance.

Homepoint, a DataArc 360 client, saved their team 50 hours per month by automating and operationalizing their data with our tool, boosting productivity, and increasing data accessibility. Jill Cannon, Senior Director of Default Administration at Homepoint, says,

“DataArc 360 is accessible to everyone and anyone within the business who wants to see credit reporting and understand exactly what the current status is. It allows management to sign in and view dashboards to immediately see the percentages of loans that are passing, the rules that are failing and at what rate and, then report on this to our leadership in a way that just wasn’t possible before.”

When you streamline and automate your Metro 2® analysis with Experian, you will see:

• Accuracy in your credit reporting.
• Advanced analytics tools that can assist during regulatory agency visits.
• Alignment between your credit reporting and larger data strategies like data quality or data governance.

With a platform that hosts results, you can easily share information and collaborate across your organization with risk, fraud, anti-money laundering, sales, marketing, and compliance. More accurate reporting also leads to a better customer experience, and ultimately, to greater customer loyalty.

Are you interested in easing your Metro 2^® reporting quality analysis process? DataArc 360™ can help.