What is a credit report and how does it affect my personal loan?

What a credit report contains: Personal information: name, address history, SSN, employment history (not used in scoring). Account information: every credit account (credit cards, loans, mortgages) including: lender name, account type, date opened, credit limit or loan amount, current balance, payment status, and payment history for each month. Public records: bankruptcies. Inquiries: hard inquiries (formal credit applications) from the past 2 years. Soft inquiries (pre-screened offers, your own pulls) are visible only to you.

Three bureaus, not one: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion each maintain their own separate report for you. The same lender may report to all three or only to some. The reports can differ meaningfully if some accounts are only reported to certain bureaus. This is why lenders sometimes pull all three - or why a score from one bureau differs from another.

Free access: You can access all three credit reports for free at AnnualCreditReport.com (federally mandated). Each bureau also offers free weekly reports under pandemic-era rules extended indefinitely.

How it affects personal loans: Lenders pull your credit report to see: payment history (are you reliable?), existing debt load (DTI calculation), derogatory marks (late payments, collections, bankruptcies), account mix and age (depth of credit history). The credit report generates your credit score (FICO, VantageScore) which is the summary number lenders use for fast qualification decisions.

Errors on credit reports: 1 in 5 Americans has at least one error on a credit report (FTC study). Errors can include incorrect late payments, accounts that are not yours, and balances that are incorrect. Dispute errors directly with the bureau online at Equifax.com, Experian.com, or TransUnion.com - bureaus have 30 days to investigate.