5 Min Read | Updated: December 15, 2023
Originally Published: August 4, 2021
How to Self-Report Good Information to Credit Bureaus
Wondering how to self-report to credit bureaus? While direct reporting isn't an option, you can authorize certain information to be included in your credit report.
This article contains general information and is not intended to provide information that is specific to American Express products and services. Similar products and services offered by different companies will have different features and you should always read about product details before acquiring any financial product.
At-A-Glance
Credit reports demonstrate how well you manage most – but not all – of your financial obligations.
What credit reports don’t include, such as on-time payments of rent and utility bills, may help to improve a credit score.
You can’t self-report those “alternative” types of accounts to credit bureaus, but you can work with a third party that will report them on your behalf.
You pay your utility bills on time, pay your rent when it’s due, and keep a balance in your checking account. These are all great habits that show how financially responsible you are, but unfortunately, they aren’t reported to the credit bureaus.
This means these laudable personal finance actions aren’t factored into your credit score, which, among other things, can help determine whether you’ll qualify for a loan, new credit card, or favorable interest rate. It’s also a missed opportunity if you’re trying to build your credit score.
You Can’t Self-Report Information to Credit Bureaus
In a world where so much can be shared, self-reporting your good information to the credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – isn’t allowed. However, there are programs that you can use to try to add rent, utility bills, and more to your credit reports.
That said, neither the financial information they track is universally used by the three main three credit bureaus, nor are lenders necessarily pulling versions of your credit score that incorporate the information.
What Is and Isn’t Reported to Credit Bureaus
Let’s begin with an understanding of the types of financial activity that are reported to the three credit agencies. They include recurring payments made for mortgages, credit cards, car loans, student loans, and similar types of debt. However, payments for utilities, such as electricity, cable, internet, phone, and water, typically aren’t reported – unless a payment is missed. The same applies to rental payments, as well as positive information about your bank accounts, such as your ability to consistently maintain a healthy balance.
Assuming these bills are consistently paid on time, think about how that may help boost your credit score.
Get Credit for Alternative Data
While you can’t self-report on utility and rental payments, you can work with services that track and report such information to the credit agencies on your behalf. Let’s take a look at two, both of which are free.
Experian Boost®: Sign up, link your checking account, and Experian will comb through your bank statements to track and report on-time utility payments, cell-phone payments, and even monthly auto-payments. Experian Boost has the potential to improve your Experian FICO® Score 8 credit score.1
UltraFICO®: With this service, FICO monitors checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market deposit accounts to determine an UltraFICO score. According to UltaFICO, by linking with your checking, savings or even money market accounts, your UltraFICO Score could improve your FICO Score based on indicators of sound financial behavior.2
Reporting Rent to Credit Bureaus
Paying rent on time is a clear sign of financial responsibility, but that information typically isn’t reported to the three credit agencies – and can’t be self-reported, either. The credit agencies will, however, accept rental payment history reported via rent-reporting services, some of which are free, while others require an enrollment and/or installment fee plus monthly payments for the forwarding of financial information.
Rent-reporting services typically require a landlord to use a payment platform that forwards records to a credit bureau. Signing up may be worthwhile if you expect to move to another rental. Attaching a credit report that shows your track record of on-time rental payments to a new lease application could help to demonstrate your reliability to a potential landlord.
However, not all credit scoring models factor in all the information sent to the credit bureaus. That applies to rental information. While FICO® Score 9 (a version of the scoring model) does incorporate rental information from a credit report, most businesses rely on FICO 8, which does not. And mortgage lenders tend to use an even older version.
In other words, your rental record isn’t likely a factor in the FICO credit scores businesses use to evaluate creditworthiness. However, VantageScore®, which is a joint scoring system developed by the three credit bureaus, does incorporate rent information.
The Takeaway
Utilities and rent are typically not automatically reported to credit bureaus, and you can’t self-report to the credit bureaus. However, you can authorize the information to be included in your credit report by working with an outside service. The end result could be a boost to your credit score.
Carla Fried is a freelance journalist who has spent her entire career specializing in personal finance. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Money, CNBC.com, and Consumer Reports, among many other media outlets.
All Credit Intel content is written by freelance authors and commissioned and paid for by American Express.
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