Credit bureaus have had a tough past year with the Equifax breach of customer data and new legislation in the U.S. looking to increase competition by allowing lenders to use different sources; changing the credit bureau system is not as easy as it may sound as they have been intertwined in the financial services system for a long time; lenders still use the bureaus for a large majority of lending decisions, even though some alternative bureaus have seen traction; the breach at Equifax could have a lasting effect because people did have a lot of trust in the company to secure their sensitive information like social security numbers; as data sharing in financial services becomes commonplace a premium will need to be placed on how that data is secured. Source.
