TransUnion

TransUnion, LLC
Private
Industry Financial services
Founded 1968
Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, USA
Area served
 Worldwide
Services Credit information
Website transunion.com

TransUnion is an American company that provides credit information and information management services to approximately 45,000 businesses and approximately 500 million consumers worldwide. It is also the third-largest credit bureau in the United States. Like major competitors Equifax and Experian, TransUnion markets credit reports directly to consumers. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois, and its revenue in 2011 was US$ 1.024 billion.


History

1968: Transunion was founded to serve as the holding company of a railcar leasing organization called the Union Tank Car Company
1969: the company acquired the Credit Bureau of Cook County (CBCC), which manually maintained 3.6 million card files in 400 seven-drawer cabinets
1981: TransUnion acquired by The Marmon Group
1988: TransUnion achieves full national coverage, maintaining and updating information on every market-active consumer in the United States
1989: TransUnion Canada is formed — its first international market
2005: TransUnion now processes approximately two billion data items a month and manages hundreds of millions of credit-active consumer files worldwide; TransUnion spins out of The Marmon Group and is wholly owned by Pritzker family business interests; TransUnion opens bureaus in Russia and Croatia
2007: TransUnion acquires the last independently owned segment of its credit database — the first U.S. credit reporting company to own its entire database
2010: Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC acquires 51% equity stake from Pritzker family business interests.
2012: Advent International and GS Capital Partners VI Fund, LP acquire TransUnion from Madison Dearborn Partners and Pritzker family business interests
2014: TransUnion obtains control of the largest consumer credit data provider in India; acquires TLO, a data fusion and analytics industry; acquires L2C Inc., a predictive analytics company that helps assess risk among consumers with little or no credit information; and acquires Driver’s History Inc., a leading provider of traffic and court data.

Legal and Regulatory Issues

− In 2003, Judy Thomas of Klamath Falls, Oregon, was awarded $5.3 million in a successful lawsuit against TransUnion. The award was made on the grounds that it took her six years to get TransUnion to remove incorrect information in her credit report.[1]


− In 2006, after spending two years trying to correct erroneous credit information that resulted from being a victim of identity theft, a fraud victim named Sloan filed suit against all three of the USA's largest credit agencies. TransUnion and Experian settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. In Sloan v. Equifax, a jury awarded Sloan $351,000. "She wrote letters. She called them. They saw the problem. They just didn't fix it," said attorney A. Hugo Blankingship III of Blankingship & Associates in Alexandria, Virginia.[2]

TransUnion has also been criticized for concealing charges. Many users complained of not being aware of a $17.95/month charge for holding a TransUnion account.[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Block, Sandra. "Fixing errors in credit report is no small task", USA Today, 2005-08-27.
  2. ↑ Baldas, Tresa. "Consumer Lawsuits Against Credit Bureaus Are Multiplying", The National Law Journal, 2006-08-16.
  3. ↑ http://www.consumeraffairs.com/privacy/transunion.html. Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links