
Cross-border credit reporting is at last becoming a reality - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/04/13/cross-border-credit-reporting-is-at-last-becoming-a-reality
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Iv
To be honest I would prefer that modern plague to stay contained within the US
borders.

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loktarogar
I moved to Canada a couple of years ago from Australia and when I got there, I
couldn't open a bank account or find a rental - Experian thought I had three
mortgages and outstanding debt. I had never been to Canada before, let alone
own property or get loans.

Keep as much info out of their hands as possible if they can't keep it
accurate.

~~~
londons_explore
Leibel laws need to be expanded to credit reporters.

If a credit agency has incorrect info on you that harms you (financially or
reputationally), they would have to compensate you.

They'd soon have a really strong incentive to check the info they report very
thoroughly...

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njarboe
And also making laws with fines against banks that libel you by telling a
credit bureau that you took out a loan and didn't repay. "Identity theft" does
not really exist. The reality is a bank loaned money to a fraudster and then
when the fraudster did not pay back the loan the bank libels the person the
fraudster impersonated when they got the loan. It would be great if the media
changed the name they used from "identity theft" to "bank libel" but I don't
see that happening.

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willio58
Yay now I can go in to debt and have it follow me I’m around the entire world!

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nine_k
That is, you cannot borrow someone else's money and try to run with them to a
different country? Seems only logical.

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black-tea
By "someone else's" you surely mean "the bank's money". I don't think
individuals are going to benefit from this, just a few large players around
the world.

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Macross8299
The money that banks loan out is not entirely their money.

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coldtea
A large percentage of it is entirely their money. And in fact, not even actual
money somebody at the bank owns, just numbers on their ledger (that they still
make interest from borrowers off).

In fact, there's most of the money the banks loan is not "somebody else's" at
all, it's "loan money".

[https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/27-4-how...](https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofeconomics/chapter/27-4-how-
banks-create-money/)

~~~
ddingus
Money created at the time of the loan.

There is (in simple terms) as much money as people can reasonably borrow.

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United857
From the article: "It requests data from international credit bureaus such as
Experian and Equifax (with the individual’s consent), paying a fee for the
service. It then packages the information to be usable by American banks and
landlords."

Genuinely curious -- aren't Experian and Equifax doing business in America to
begin with? Why don't they have internal portability of their own data?

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tialaramex
The CRAs have very different levels of reach, access to high quality data, and
legal authority to do what they do in each jurisdiction. Joining it all up
would be a nightmare IT problem.

In the UK for example Experian is originally the result of running a mail
order catalog company which offered credit and noting which customers (most of
whom would have been housewives) paid and which did not. The government gives
it privileged access to records of company directors and the names and
addresses of registered voters, but it is obliged to give access to all data
about people to those people for a small fee on request, and to fix any
mistakes.

In the US the sources are completely different, and the laws are completely
different.

I'm an ex-Experian employee but I don't believe I've said anything above that
isn't public knowledge.

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TheLuddite
The financial data of an individual should be protected the same way the
health data is.

If this means more fraud/scam/conmen so be it.

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RandomBacon
> The financial data of an individual should be protected the same way the
> health data is.

So basically not protected at all?

At least banks will ask your SSN to verify your identity. The health industry
just asks for your DOB.

(Example is in the US. Social Security Number, Date of Birth)

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scarejunba
This is fantastic. I hate it when I move countries and it's hard to get a
bloody credit card.

