On November 13th, 2013, Experian And the National Foundation for Credit Counselling jointly announced that Experian would be donating 80,000 twelve month memberships to their freecreditscore.com product (total value at over $17,000,000). This will be used in conjunction with the NFCC’s “sharpen your financial focus” program.
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What Are The Benefits of Freecreditscore.com?
- Credit score. This is a FAKO score called the PLUS score and it’s based on the data Experian collect. It’s updated on a biweekly basis. Customers can also track this score over time and see how certain financial decisions (e.g closing a credit card) will affect their score.
Find out how to get your FICO score for free
- Identity theft protection. Daily identity theft monitoring, dedicated fraud resolution team and a $50,000 product guarantee (not offered to those who reside in New York).
- Experian credit report. This is also updated on a biweekly basis. They also provide discounted pricing on reports from TransUnion & Equifax.
Get your credit report from all three agencies for free from annualcreditreport.com
- Alerts/credit monitoring. These alert customers to any key changes (e.g an application for new credit) which may be fraudulent. It also scans the credit report for information that could be incomplete or inaccurate that an individual can dispute with the credit bureaus to improve their credit history. Direct access to Experian’s dispute resolution center is also provided.
What Are The Benefits Of NFCC’s “Sharpen Your Financial Focus” Program?
- A visit to MyMoneyCheckUp. This is an online financial self assessment tool that aims to improve financial awareness and provide consumers with steps to improve their financial well being.
- A financial review with a NFCC certified financial profession. This is to develop a long term plan for that individuals finances.
- A financial workshop that aims to educate the consumer about areas of interest.
Our Thoughts
It’s great to see that Experian is making a donation to help people with their financial education, but it’s disappointing that they’re offering access to a product that provides the consumer with a FAKO score rather than a FICO score. As part of their education with the NFCC we hope they are learning the difference.
It’s a bit disappointing to see that NFCC also focuses on a lot of automated methods (MyMoneCheckUp) when people with a poor credit history likely need one on one help to learn how to manage their finances.
We’d like to see all three of the credit bureaus roll out more credit education programs, especially those that are aimed at today’s youth before they get themselves into financial difficulties. Parents also need to step up and start taking responsibility for educating their kids.
