Did you know that the average difference between a typical lender tier is less than 30 points? More importantly, there is only about a 91-point spread between a top credit tier (excellent credit) to a bottom tier (poor credit). What this means is that pulling a second (or third) bureau can put your customer in a higher credit tier, therefore qualifying them for a much better interest rate.

It’s not that one credit bureau is consistently high and the others are low; it totally depends on the unique credit profile housed at the various credit bureau providers.

In many cases, dealerships only pull one credit bureau to finance a customer — usually the one required by their primary lending institution. By offering a second or even a third option from an alternate bureau, dealers can see how varied the scores can be, and potentially offer better financing terms to customers who did not show a good score with the first pull.

In many cases dealers are pulling multiple reports on nearly every applicant today as a best practice —but in other cases they do not. Dealers who do not regularly evaluate all sources of credit bureau data are missing profit opportunities and/or sales.

In a recent study:

· 55 percent of applicants with two credit bureaus pulled have risk scores that vary by more than 20 points

· 75.4 percent of applicants with all three credit bureaus pulled have risk scores that vary by more than 20 points

Real-life examples of spreads detected in test runs:

· 561 to 658 (Equifax to Experian)

· 472 to 598 (Equifax to Transunion)

· 407 to 524 (Experian to Transunion)

· 630 to 689 (Experian to Equifax)

These statistics clearly show there are benefits to the dealer to pulling more than one bureau when trying to find the best funding solution for their customers. These benefits can include:

· Potentially increasing gross profit on deals

· Fund exponentially more deals — those that you may have walked away from given the lower score provided by just one bureau pull

· Offer your customers a lower interest rate which will lower their monthly payments and make it more likely they will buy/fund the car through your store

· Customer appreciation and satisfaction — Customers will appreciate you working harder with lenders to get them the best interest rate possible.

700Credit will be hosting a webinar on the benefits of Multi-bureau Pulls on June 5th & 7th if you would like to learn more. You can go to 700Credit.com/webinars to enroll now.