What is Credit Monitoring in Banks?
Credit monitoring is essential to keep user’s accounts safe from fraud. This service alerts users whenever a change is made to one if their credit reports and gives them the chance to confirm the accuracy of the change and sort out problems before they get out of hand. Suspicious changes in a customer’s credit-report are potential signs of fraud or an error and can cause lenders to reject the customer in the future. Credit monitoring in banks is important today as data breaches continue to rise.
Effective Credit Monitoring
For a bank to offer a customer effective credit monitoring, they need to notify them within 24 hours of any sign of fraud. Unexpected changes in new accounts, existing-account changes, and address changes are some of the common things customers do that banks will verify with them to ensure it is truly them that is authorizing these changes.
Other detections of possible fraud include: Hard inquiries or when a credit card loan application is submitted in the customer’s name, new public records or any information about tax liens, bankruptcies, and civil court judgments, and non-credit red flags that security companies have created to identify theft solutions more comprehensively than traditional credit-monitoring methods.
The most effective credit monitoring alerts customers on their important activities like credit history, credit inquiries, delinquency, public records, and negative information so they can stay on top of the information that is being provided to credit lenders.
Credit Monitoring Tools in Banks
There are many services available for both banks and individuals to use to ensure their credit is consistently monitored and protected. These are the five best credit monitoring services on the market today:
Identity Guard is considered the best comprehensive credit monitoring service on the market right now. This service includes social security number monitoring, ID verification alerts, account takeover alerts, identity theft victim assistance, lost-wallet protection, $1 million dollars in identity theft insurance, 3-bureau credit monitoring and ID Vault password protection.
LifeLock is a very popular service that most people have heard of due to their interesting commercials and ads. The benefits that LifeLock offers include identity threat detection and alerts, black-market website monitoring, lost-wallet protection, sex offender registry reports and monthly credit score tracking.
Identity Force is another one of the top credit monitoring services on the market with a minimal monthly cost. Some of the features the service offers include identity threat detection and alerts, lost-wallet protection, $1 million in ID theft insurance, identity restoration specialists to help customers, court records and sex-offender monitoring, as well as, 3-bureau credit monitoring.
Experian offers triple-bureau credit monitoring with many options which is why it is one of the top services available today. The services Experian offers its customers include: 3-bureau credit report monitoring, alerts for credit report changes, one-time access to a credit report, dedicated fraud resolution support for customers, lost-wallet protection and ID theft insurance.
TransUnion, much like Experian, is a credit reporting bureau and provides some of the best credit monitoring services on the market. Some of these features include 3-bureau credit report monitoring, alerts for changes in credit reports, one-time access to a credit report, identity restoration services, lost-wallet protection, ID theft insurance and security freezes to prevent further fraudulent activity.
The importance of credit monitoring in banks is great today, especially as credit threats and data breaches continue to increase in occurrence and sophistication. It is essential for not only banks to help keep customer’s information private and safe from fraud but also for customers to take it upon themselves to keep up with their credit and monitor it regularly.
