3 Main Credit Bureaus

The Big Three (rating agencies)

Since the 2007-2009 2007-2009 meltdown of the US residential sector, the Big Three have been "under close scrutiny" since the pre-crisis valuation of distressed banks such as Lehman Brothers and high-risk mortgage-related assets that helped the US residential sector break down. Against the backdrop of the turmoil, the report [7] of the German Federal Finance Minister entitled the "failures" of the Big Three credit ratings agency "essential teeth in the wheels of economic destruction".

Frequent critique of the Big Three since early 2010, which was strongly associated with the banking collapse in the 2008 downturn, is the domination of agency firms in the markets. Since the three agents accounted for 95% of the total agency sales, the scope for competitive tendering was very limited.

There are many who believe that this was a determining factor in the poisonous bond market surrounding the economic downswing. An initial discussion in the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs at the end of 2011 supported the idea that there should be more effective inter-agency competitiveness. It was believed that this would reduce conflict of interest and provide more transparency in the assessment of public debts.

"Credit dispute. U.S. SEC Report on the Role and Function of Credit Rating Agencies in the Operation of the Securities Markets " (PDF). Credit Cards: "Rating Agencies: Reuters, 12 November 2013, " (Reuters) - Credit unions from five different nations are establishing a new international bureau and promoting it as an alternate to the Big Three bureaux, which they say no longer serve the needs of the new globalized environment.

ARC Ratings said in a Tuesday announcement that the London based firm would start as a partnership between CPR of Portugal, CPR of India, GCR of South Africa, MARC of Malaysia and Brazil's SR Ratings.

Ecuifax under bank pressures to develop.

Banking is crucial to Equifax's business as it provides the business with information on consumers' debt and payment details that it collates in credit statements that it sells to other credit providers, as well as mortgages, credit cards, lessors and hospital providers. However, withdrawing the banks' assistance to Equifax would be at the expense of further dependence on the other two large US credit and jobs collector, Experian plc (EXPN.L) and TransUnion (TRU.N).

US banking practices typically involve the collection of credit ratings from all three credit rating agencies before home, car and credit card credits are bundled and bonds sold on bond market. The state-financed mortgages financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example, ask the three credit inquiry offices. Equifax's difficulties in ending such a policy could protect it from a sharp bank uprising.

"With the strong interdependency between creditors and these information suppliers, they have a strong interest that there are more than two and they want Equifax to continue to exist," said James Thomas, a Standard & Poor's business credit researcher. "When it comes to the negotiation of credit report pricing, if there are only two gamers, then they have less skill to compete against each other," Thomas said.

Mr Rick Smith, Chief Executive Officer of TriCo Bancshares (TCBK. O), a Chico, California-based bank with $4.5 billion in asset values, said it would be hard to stop using Equifax. However, the readiness of creditors to back Equifax is being measured by the way the firm coped with the slip from its September 7 revelation that a hacker had gained information on 143 million and more.

Up to the time the infringement was established, Equifax's investor were optimistic that the company's commercial strategy was to sell goods that creditors needed and new entrants could not copy. It would be hard for everyone else to collect the flood of finance information held by credit bureaus, as well as the lending policies of million people.

No more than one or two enterprises collecting credit information at national level exist in most Member States. "In order to even get closer to replication, you would have to go to just about every big creditor in the credit eco-system and persuade them to involve you in their provision of data," Thomas said.

The hacker bank may now be even more hesitant to pass on their client information to an emerging player, Thomas added. However, the scale of the Equifax infringement has made the company's preferred location appear vulnerably. There is not only a potential danger of common loss of credit cards due to scams, but also a potential delay in opening an online bank and approving a credit or debit transfer as it takes longer to verify a person's ID.

Since September 7, Equifax has depreciated $5.8 billion in share value, a third of what its stocks were valued before the publication of the violation. Mr Brian Gudmundson, a Zimmerman Reed attorney in Minneapolis, said he was prepared for a possible lawsuit against Equifax on the part of hundreds of millions of lenders.

"Gudmundson, who defended the creditors in a $39 million arrangement with Target Corp in 2015 over a cyber-break in their credit cards system, said there will be expenses we can't even imagine at the moment. However, the very large financial institutions have a tendency to work out their own rights, Gudmundson said.

To date, bank-ers say, they have not noted an increase  in deceptive action that would suggest that dates suspended at Equifax be used. It is also not clear whether Equifax falls behind the industrial protection standard against cluster munitions that banking quickly says could pass through any business.

"It' not easy to be harsh on them [Equifax] until the detail is known," said the bankier.