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CFPB issues correction of “credit invisibles” estimate

June 27, 2025

On June 23, the CFPB issued a technical correction and update to its estimate of “credit invisibles” — adults in the U.S. without a credit record or with insufficient credit history to generate a credit score. As previously covered by InfoBytes, in 2015, the CFPB initially reported that more than 26 million consumers were “credit invisible” (i.e., consumers without credit histories from a nationwide consumer reporting agency). The Bureau’s revised analysis — which was based on the use of a new data source — found that, after correcting the data, an estimated 5.8 percent of adults, or 13.5 million consumers, were credit invisible in December 2010, down from the previously reported 11 percent, or 25.9 million consumers. The correction also raised the estimated share of adults with an unscored credit record in December 2010 from 7.4 to 12.7 percent, representing an increase from 17.2 million to 29.7 million consumers. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of adults with a scored credit record increased by nearly 6 percentage points, from 81.6 to 87.5 percent, or from 191.3 million to 225.3 million consumers.