Retail Credit Company
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| Public company | |
| Traded as | : EFX S&P 500 Component |
| Industry | Credit risk assessment |
| Founded | 1899 |
| Headquarters | 1550 Peachtree St. & One Atlantic Center, Atlanta, Georgia, United States |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
|
Rick Smith (Chairman and CEO) |
| Revenue |
 US$ 3.144 billion (2016)
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| US$ 817.9 million (2016) |
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US$ 488.8 million (2016)
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| Total assets |
US$ 6.664 billion (2016)
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| Total equity |
US$ 2.662 billion (2016)
|
|
Number of employees
|
9,500 (2016) |
| Divisions |
Equifax Canada Equifax Workforce Solutions |
| Website | equifax.com |
Equifax Inc. is a consumer credit reporting agency in the United States, considered one of the three largest American credit agencies along with Experian and TransUnion. Founded in 1899, Equifax is the oldest of the three agencies and gathers and maintains information on over 800 million consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Equifax is a global service provider with US $2.7 billion in annual revenue and 9,000+ employees in 14 countries. Equifax is listed on the NYSE.
Equifax was founded in Atlanta, GA, as Retail Credit Company in 1899. The company grew quickly and by 1920 had offices throughout the US and Canada. By the 1960s, Retail Credit Company was one of the nation's largest credit bureaus, holding files on millions of American and Canadian citizens. Even though they still did credit reporting the majority of their business was making reports to insurance companies when people applied for new insurance policies including life, auto, fire and medical insurance. All of the major insurance companies used RCC to get information on health, habits, morals, use of vehicles and finances. They also investigated insurance claims and made employment reports when people were seeking new jobs. Most of the credit work was then being done by a subsidiary, Retailers Commercial Agency.
Retail Credit Company's extensive information holdings, and its willingness to sell them to anyone, attracted criticism of the company in the 1960s and 1970s. These included that it collected "...facts, statistics, inaccuracies and rumors… about virtually every phase of a person's life; his marital troubles, jobs, school history, childhood, sex life, and political activities." The company was also alleged to reward its employees for collecting negative information on consumers.
As a result, when the company moved to computerize its records, which would lead to much wider availability of the personal information it held, the US Congress held hearings in 1970. These led to the enactment of the Fair Credit Reporting Act in the same year which gave consumers rights regarding information stored about them in corporate databanks. It is alleged that the hearings prompted the Retail Credit Company to change its name to Equifax in 1975 to improve its image.
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Wikipedia