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How to Remove Factual Data from Your Credit Report

By:
Money Staff
8 min read

Have you recently come across the name Factual Data on your credit report and wondered what it is? Factual Data isn’t a lender or service provider like some other entries on your report. Instead, it’s a company that runs credit checks for lenders. If you’ve applied for a mortgage or another type of loan, your application could be responsible for Factual Data’s hard inquiry.

Factual Data credit inquiry

Factual Data Corp. (FDC) is a credit reporting agency employed by lenders to obtain potential borrowers’ credit reports from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. It may show up on your credit history as Kroll Factual Data, Inc., or Kroll Factual Data.

FDC most commonly provides mortgage lenders with merged credit reports, which combine the information from all three bureaus into one comprehensive document. In fact, the company’s website claims it provides risk mitigation, credit reporting and independent verification services using items such as public records.

It verifies information by using your Social Security number and looks at credit information from FICO scoring models, which includes new credit and credit history. The company provides risk mitigation by automating the underwriting process in the U.S.

Lenders use this information and the FDC credit report to decide whether to provide you with a loan. If a lender approves your loan request or credit request, the data also helps determine what interest rate you're awarded.

FDC also runs soft credit inquiries for prospective employers and landlords to verify one’s identity, background and credit score. Below is a closer look at the difference between soft and hard inquiries.

How does a hard credit check affect your report?

There are two kinds of credit inquiries. Soft inquiries, as described above, simply verify your score. Lenders can run soft inquiries when you apply for a job or apartment, but they also appear on your credit report when you get pre-qualified for a loan or if you check your credit score. A soft inquiry doesn’t hurt your credit, while a hard inquiry might.

Whenever you apply for a loan, a lender requires a more invasive and in-depth credit check, which is a hard inquiry. Lenders use your credit history to determine how reliable of a borrower you are. As such, they may obtain one or all your credit reports in the screening process or a merged FDC credit report.

A creditor or lender adds this type of inquiry to your report, and it could stay on it for two years. Hard inquiries typically drop your score by a couple of points, but they can be more detrimental if you have several of them on your report. Having a slew of credit applications suggests that you’re financially unstable. This lowers your score more significantly than a single entry.

There are a few exceptions, like when you’re comparison shopping for a mortgage. You have a 14-day window to apply for similar loans, during which time individual applications shouldn’t lower your score.

How to remove FDC Corp. from your credit report

As you can see above, a hard inquiry from FDC isn’t detrimental to your financial goals. However, if FDC Corp. is on your report by mistake, you should do what you can to have the hard inquiry removed from your credit report.

Here are some strategies to help you start rectifying the issue:

Dispute FDC’s hard inquiry

When a reporting error is to blame for a negative entry on your credit report, responding quickly is key. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) covers you in situations like this and requires credit reporting agencies, like FDC, to get their facts straight.

You can dispute the error by contacting FDC and the credit bureaus. If FDC ran a hard inquiry on your credit history that has negatively impacted your score, the FCRA requires companies to provide you with the details and a copy of the report. By law, you have 30 days to dispute an inaccurate entry on your credit report, so you should act fast if you think something is amiss on your report.

To stay alert to changes to your report, sign up for a free credit monitoring service. Those companies notify you when new entries emerge on your report and let you know when your score changes for any reason.

Get help from a credit repair company

With the tools and resources provided by the FCRA, you’re fully equipped to dispute an inaccurate entry on your credit report, but you don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes, it can be easier to leave disputing entries to the experienced representatives.

A good credit repair company can help you straighten out reporting errors, break down your credit report and come up with a game plan to tackle your biggest credit issues to improve your score quickly.

To give you an idea, here are some of the types of problems credit repair companies deal with:

If you don’t want to take on the stress of dealing with credit reporting agencies, contact a reputable credit repair company to handle it.

FDC contact information

You can contact FDC at the address or phone number below:

400 Holiday Dr., Suite 300
Pittsburgh, PA 15220

Phone Number: 800-216-3463
Website: http://www.factualdata.com

Getting FDC removed from your report

If you applied for a mortgage and you’re stressing over the impact on your credit score, there’s no need to worry. While it might lower your score by a few points now, the entry will be off your report in two years, and its effects on your score will diminish as time goes by.

If you didn’t apply for a loan and FDC is on your report anyway, you still don’t need to stress. You’re legally protected from inaccurate reporting, and with a few simple steps, you can get FDC deleted from your report.

If you haven’t already, take a few moments to look up your score and an overview of your report with a credit monitoring service. Don’t delay disputing any inaccuracies on your report, however small they may seem. There’s no reason to let faulty reporting hold you back from being able to take out a loan or get a credit card in the future. As always, don’t forget that you have several excellent credit repair companies at your disposal that can help take your credit score to the next level.

Update: This article has been updated to reflect FDC’s current contact information.

Disclaimer: This story was originally published on October 28, 2020, on BetterCreditBlog.org. To find the most relevant information concerning collections or credit card inquiries, please visit: https://money.com/how-to-remove-collections-from-credit-report/ or https://money.com/get-items-removed-from-credit-report/

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