Finance Blog
Equifax Credit Team – About Robin Holland
What I like best about my role as Global Consumer Services Leader for Equifax is any opportunity to educate customers.
Outside the walls of Equifax, I do a lot of volunteer work on financial literacy and teach workshops on how to understand credit, how to be a smarter consumer, and generally how credit works. I believe that knowledge is power. The more knowledge people have about their credit report—how the information is collected and how the credit score is derived—the more empowered they will be to take control of their financial lives. When I hold these workshops in underserved communities, I love to see when the light comes on, when it finally clicks.
Often, the people in my workshops don’t even know what their credit report is. I try to explain it’s just a history of how you pay your bills, all recorded in one place. Once people understand that, they can start to understand how their credit history reflects upon them and how they can control that.
My big passion, no matter where the people come from, what kind of house they live in, or what kind of job they have, is getting them to understand how their spending habits, budgeting skills, and credit behavior will affect them for the rest of their lives.
I try to tell people that it’s never too early to start educating your children about how to use credit. Some people say high school kids should have to take a personal finance class. I say elementary school! I think we’ve all seen, especially in this economy, that if you don’t manage credit wisely you can get into trouble.
Financial literacy is a key problem today, and that’s why I’m so thankful I’m in the position to educate and help people. One of the best ways to educate the public is with a balance of information from credit reporting agencies, information from the credit issuers, and financial literacy education.
That’s what I hope to do with this blog. I want to clear up some misconceptions about what credit reporting agencies do, and I want to provide some information to help you understand where your credit score comes from and help you take control of your credit and finances.
I’d love to hear from you about your credit questions and help you connect all the pieces of your financial life. What questions do you have?
No comments yet
We welcome your interest and participation on this forum, but be aware that comments will be published at Equifax's sole discretion. Please don't use this blog to submit questions or concerns about your Equifax credit report or raise customer service issues. Instead, you should contact Equifax directly for all such matters and any attempts to do so in this forum will be promptly re-directed.
Some other factors to consider when commenting:
- Registration and privacy. While no registration is required to visit our forum, participants wishing to post a message must register by creating an account. All personal information provided by forum members incident to registration is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
- All comments are anonymous. We'll delete your name, e-mail address, and any other identifying information, including details about your investments.
- We can't post or respond to every comment - As much as we'd like to, we can't post every comment, nor can we guarantee that we will respond to each individual message. All questions or comments about your Equifax credit report or similar customer service issues should be handled by contacting Equifax directly.
- Don't offer specific legal, tax or financial advice. All of the materials on this Site are for information, education, and noncommercial purposes only and this forum is not intended as a means of expressing views or ideas regarding any specific legal, tax, or investment advice. While offering general rules of thumb is both permitted and encouraged, recommending specific ideas or strategies regarding investments, taxes, and related matters is prohibited.
- Credit Repair. This blog is not intended as a venue for the discussion or exchange of ideas regarding credit repair or other strategies intended to assist visitors and community members improve or otherwise modify their credit histories, ratings or scores.
- Stay on topic. Your comment should be concise and pertain to the specific post in question.
- Be respectful of the community. The use of profanity, offensive language, spam, and personal attacks will not be tolerated and egregious or repeat offenders will be banned from future participation. We encourage disagreement and healthy debate, but please refrain from personal attacks on our WordPresss and contributors.
- Finally: Participation in this forum may be terminated by Equifax immediately and without notice for failure to comply with any guidelines or Terms of Use. As such, you should familiarize yourself with all pertinent requirements prior to submitting any response through the blog or otherwise. All opinions expressed in this forum are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and don't necessarily represent the views of Equifax or its management.
Equifax maintains this interactive forum for education and information purposes in order to allow individuals to share their relevant knowledge and opinions with other members and visitors. We encourage you to participate in discussions about personal finance issues and other topics of interest to this community, but please read our commenting guidelines first. Equifax reserves the right to monitor postings to the forum and comments will be published at our discretion. Do you have questions or comments about your Equifax credit report or customer-service issues regarding an Equifax product? If so, please contact Equifax directly. All opinions and information expressed or shared in blog comments are solely those of the person submitting the comments, and don't necessarily represent the views of Equifax or its management.
RSS Feeds