Most people meet Factual Data in one of two places: as an unfamiliar hard inquiry on their credit report during a mortgage application, or in the fine print of a denial letter naming the company that supplied the credit report. Either way, the reaction is the same — who is this, and why do they have my credit file?
What Factual Data is
Factual Data is a credit reporting company that serves mortgage lenders. In its own words, it “provides credit information from Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRAs) to its clients, which are primarily banks, mortgage companies and other lending institutions.” It appears on Fannie Mae’s list of approved credit information providers — the companies mortgage lenders order reports through when they run an application. If your report or denial letter names CBCInnovis, that is the same company: CBCInnovis unified with Factual Data in 2019 and the CBCInnovis brand was retired, per the company’s own announcement — but the old name still appears on reports and letters. It does not make lending decisions, and it does not maintain its own database of your accounts. It gathers your information from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, assembles it into the report your lender ordered, and sends it on.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act this kind of company is called a reseller. That word matters less than what follows from it: a reseller passing along your credit information has legal duties to you, including the duty to handle disputes about the reports it sells.
Why Factual Data is on your credit report
When a mortgage lender orders your credit through Factual Data, the pull is recorded on your bureau files under Factual Data’s name rather than the lender’s — which is why an inquiry appears from a company you never dealt with. If you applied for a mortgage, refinance, or pre-approval around the date of the inquiry, that is almost certainly what happened.
If you did not apply for anything, take the inquiry seriously. A credit report may only be pulled with a permissible purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and an inquiry you cannot account for can mean someone applied for credit in your name. Pull all three of your bureau reports and check for accounts you do not recognize.
The report your lender saw is not the report you see
The report Factual Data sells a mortgage lender is assembled from all three bureaus at the moment of the application. That assembly step is where a clean file can go wrong. The errors we see in merged mortgage reports include another person’s debts pulled into your file because of a similar name or Social Security number, an account that one bureau reports correctly and another reports as delinquent, balances and payment histories that are months out of date, and files flagged as belonging to someone deceased.
A mortgage rides on this document. An error that drops your middle score even modestly can change your rate, and an error serious enough can end the approval — sometimes days before a closing date.
How to dispute an error on a Factual Data report
You have two routes, and they are not exclusive.
Dispute with Factual Data. Its consumer assistance page says you may dispute inaccurate information by fax, mail or phone, and provides dispute forms. The contact details it publishes are: Factual Data, PO Box 530090, Atlanta, GA 30353; phone (877) 237-8317; fax (866) 516-3502. When a reseller receives a dispute, the Act requires it to determine whether the error came from its own assembly of the report — and to correct it if so — or to forward your dispute to the bureau the information came from.
Dispute with the bureaus. Because Factual Data’s reports are built from bureau data, an error usually lives in your Equifax, Experian or TransUnion file. Disputing with the bureau reaches the source, and the bureau generally has thirty days to investigate. Dispute in writing and keep everything: the report page showing the error, your letter, proof of mailing, and every response.
Where the pull itself was not authorized — not merely unfamiliar — the question changes from what the company is to what right it had to look. See someone pulled your credit and had no right to.
When a report error costs you the mortgage
If a dispute comes back “verified” and the error stays, or a wrong report costs you an approval, a rate, or a closing, the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you a claim — against the bureau, the company that furnished the bad information, or the reseller, depending on where the failure happened. Damages can include the financial loss, the harm to your credit, and statutory and punitive damages where the violation was willful.
What it costs
The fee provision is written into the Act: in a successful action the costs and reasonable attorney’s fees are recoverable from the defendant, as determined by the court. That is why this work is handled on a contingency basis rather than billed by the hour.
You pay nothing unless we win.
Where your situation fits
If the report mixed you up with someone else, our mixed credit report page covers how that happens and how it is fixed. If a dispute has already failed and you are weighing what comes next, see our FCRA lawsuit page. Our directory of consumer reporting agencies lists the companies that keep files on you, and our credit report errors lawyer page sets out what we do on these cases.
Have your report reviewed
The Kim Law Firm represents consumers in Fair Credit Reporting Act cases against the credit bureaus, the specialty and mortgage reporting companies, and the companies that furnish information to them. Send us the denial letter or the report and we will tell you whether we see a claim.
Contact us to have your credit report reviewed.
Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.
This page is about credit reporting accuracy. The Kim Law Firm is not affiliated with Factual Data, and this page is not a complaint about that company. It describes how errors can appear in merged mortgage credit reports and the rights consumers have when they do.