RALEIGH, N.C.—President Obama is expected to recognize State Employees’ CU here for providing members with free FICO scores, a program the $29-billion credit union says is being well received by members.
According to the White House, President Obama plans to introduce a pair of new bills designed to boost cybersecurity protections in the U.S., and at the same time also announce that JPMorgan Chase, USAA and SECU are joining a group of financial firms that have already agreed to make credit scores available to consumers.
Mark Kretzschmar, SVP of loan servicing at SECU, said the credit union is “honored” to receive recognition from the president. “SECU whole-heartedly supports the president’s efforts to highlight the beneficial aspects that providing free credit scores to consumers can have in combating identity theft.”
SECU began providing free FICO Scores to members with an active lending relationship in November of 2014.
“The feedback we’ve received regarding this program from our membership has been overwhelmingly positive, as I believe members are truly seeing the benefit to having access to such valuable information,” explained Kretzschmar. “Currently, over 819,000 members have access to their FICO score via our secure Member Access website and, to date, over 300,000 members have viewed their FICO score online since the program went live.”
In addition to being able to access their FICO score, SECU members also receive the top factors that are negatively impacting their score and additional educational content that helps explain what they can do to help improve their FICO score.
“FICO scores will be updated on a quarterly basis and, soon, we’ll begin providing our members with a chart to view their older scores—so they can track their progress over time,” said Kretzschmar.
Kretzschmar explained that while SECU does not engage in risk-based pricing, it acknowledges that many lenders approve and price loans based on FICO scores.
“We felt that by providing FICO scores to our members we could help increase their financial awareness, which hopefully helps them make better financial choices in the future,” he said.
Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union in Harrisburg, Penn., also provides members with free FICO scores.
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