Microbilt Corporation is a credit reporting company and leading alternative credit data provider. Since its founding in 1978, it has grown by acquisition to challenge its larger rivals. Its PRBC consumer credit subsidiary offers consumers the ability to self-report on the bill paying habits as a means of positively impacting their credit score. MicroBilt’s other subsidiaries focus on business credit and services to sub-prime lenders. Many of the company's products are designed to help businesses accurately assess risk on consumers who otherwise have thin traditional credit files. In doing so, credit can be extended to consumers where it couldn't before opening a new customer base to a company and new opportunities to a consumer.
Products
MicroBilt offers a wide range of data products and services across the lending cycle from originations and underwriting through collections and debt recovery. Their products are available as APIs and through custom web portals. Among the company’s best-known products are:
- A consumer lending platform that leverages alternative credit data and allows consumers to contribute their own bill paying information to help improve their score.
- An automated decisioning platform that leverages traditional and alternative credit data to assess consumer risk during lending assessments.
- A prescreening product used to verify consumer identity and banking information in advance of lending and other business transactions.
- A real-time consumer financial data aggregator used to assess a consumer’s ability to repay a loan.
- Helps lenders reduce underwriting risk by leveraging a consumer’s reported banking and loan history together to more precisely identify qualified borrowers and better predict loan payment default and was developed through current customers interviews and competitor products.
- A platform used to very a company’s compliance with federal and state lending regulations including FCRA compliance as well as the proper management and handling of consumer credit information.
Acquisitions
Bloomberg's Company overview of MicroBilt, based on data independently collected by Standard & Poor's, lists the following acquisitions and incorporations:
2002 - MergTech assets
2004 - incorporated MicroBilt Merchant Services and MicroBilt Financial Services
Incorporated in 2004, MicroBilt Financial Services acquired several companies in 1994, 1995 and 1996, and used the name MicroBilt Financial Services Division on an interim basis. Some of their software products were internally developed and others were purchased.
PRBC
Incorporated in 2002 as Pay Rent, Build Credit, PRBC's Unique selling proposition is letting individuals detail their creditworthiness using verifiable data that is not used by the other major credit reporting agencies. Initial success factors included that individuals could self-register, and recognition by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Citimortgage. MicroBilt, which acquired PRBC in 2008, has continued to develop it, and released a major line extension in 2012. To the publicat large, PRBC is MicroBilt's most visible offering. A year after the 2008 acquisition, some attention was attained with their “Personal info we’ve got to protect, because you know we don't want identify theft” rap.
CL Verify
CL Verify, which provides identity verification and payday loan history reporting, was acquired in 2010 from DP Bureau They compete with Teletrack, which is known for its consumer credit database used by sub-prime lenders and payday lenders. Somewhat prior to this acquisition, CL Verify had launched a Skip tracing service.
Books using MicroBilt data
Several recent books have used data from MicroBilt for research.
Corporate Performance
As a holding company, MicroBilt Corporation began to attract significant earnings coverage by 1987. The NY Times, in reporting on the limited use of on-time rental-payments by other major Credit Reporting Agencies, mentions that "MicroBilt... provides services including alternative credit reporting" and how "MicroBilt's data is used to generate FICO Expansion Scores, which are used for consumers who don't qualify for a traditional FICO score."
