IDIQ, a financial intelligence company that empowers consumers to take everyday action to control their financial well-being, recently released new data highlighting important consumer credit concerns as reported by mortgage, real estate, and lending professionals, as well as consumers themselves.
The findings are compiled in a report titled “The Modern Credit Challenge: Mortgage & Real Estate Professional & Consumer Research.” This report highlights pressing credit health issues from both the perspectives of industry professionals and consumers and introduces IDIQ’s newest product, CreditBuilderIQ, as the solution.
“CreditBuilderIQ is a game-changing platform for our partners in the mortgage, real estate, and lending industries,” said Surya Pochareddy, IDIQ executive vice president, strategy and general manager, credit services products. “After speaking with financial professionals and consumers, we built an essential solution to efficiently build and improve credit profiles.”
The research was based on surveys of more than 100 mortgage, real estate, and lending professionals, as well as more than 200 prospective consumers, and an analysis of proprietary data from more than 20,000 IDIQ customers with credit scores below 700.
Key Findings
The key takeaways from the report include the top five consumer concerns:
- Not knowing how to strengthen their credit
- Catching up on late payments
- Having inaccuracies on their credit report
- Unknown inquiries
- Lack of access to preferential financing
The report highlights these stats for consumers:
- 82% of consumers want to learn more about how to improve their credit scores
- 76% have at least two derogatory marks on their credit report
- 74% have non-optimal credit utilization
- 67% have a debt collection on their report
- 59% are planning to purchase a car or home in the next year
For mortgage and real estate professionals, important findings include:
- 75% want to refer clients to DIY credit-building solutions
- 70% want the ability to track clients’ credit
- 50% wish current credit-building tools offered a consumer score plan and goals to improve scores
What Does This Mean for Consumers?
The study shows consumers need help with their credit profiles. Some have thin credit files, others have high credit usage, and many have negative items affecting their credit score. Some or all of these reasons make it difficult to qualify for mortgages and other large purchases, or to receive an ideal rate.
It is not just IDIQ’s survey and analysis — government reports further corroborate these findings. In fact, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reports 45 million American consumers have no credit scores. A Federal Trade Commission study indicates that more than 25 million U.S. consumers have an inaccuracy on their credit report that might be affecting their credit scores.
It’s clear that a large percentage of the U.S. population needs help with credit and finances, that consumers need help for a variety of reasons, and that consumers are interested in education and tools to tackle their credit.
What Does This Mean for Mortgage, Real Estate, and Lending Professionals?
The mortgage, real estate, and lending professionals surveyed by IDIQ overwhelmingly reported a need for essential credit-building tools to help consumers reach their financial goals. They stated a lack of credit or a good credit score as a main reason that clients aren’t able to qualify for that large purchase. Unfortunately, Freddie Mac reports that more than 80% of non-approved applications don’t expect to apply again with the same lender.
The professionals surveyed want to help clients reach their credit goals, but need an effective, efficient, and transparent solution. That’s where CreditBuilderIQ comes in.
Building and Qualifying for Credit with CreditBuilderIQ
CreditBuilderIQ is a new all-in-one smart software that brings personalized credit-building tools to consumers’ fingertips. The smart software has features that benefit both partners and consumers.
The comprehensive range of features include:
- Score Trigger Alerts for partners that provide updates when clients reach set credit score goals
- Personalized Gameplan cards that provide education and actions consumers can take to build credit
- AI-driven Interactive Credit Analysis so users can gain valuable insights into their credit profiles and easily view potential inaccuracies negatively affecting their credit
- Score Factors outlining key items negatively or positively impacting a consumer’s credit
- Dispute Generation that allows users to address inaccuracies on their credit reports
- Credit reports and scores from all three major credit bureaus so users have a comprehensive view of their credit profile
- Utility Payment Reporting to both establish credit profiles and enhance positive factors on existing profiles.
With its partner-focused approach, IDIQ adds to the partner-consumer connection, offers a comprehensive and efficient tool to optimize credit, and helps both partners and consumers close deals.
You can download the full report here.
