 TITLE: What Is a Merged Credit Report? CONTENT: How Do Merged Credit Reports Work?\n----------------------------------\nMerged credit reports are also known as tri-merge reports or three-bureau reports. They're generally created by third-party mortgage reporting companies that gather your information from the major consumer credit bureaus—Experian, TransUnion and Equifax.\nThe company sorts and combines the information from your three reports to create the merged report. Duplicate entries may also be removed. There may be a summary near the beginning of the merged report that provides an overview of the consumer's open accounts, balances, disputes, inquiries, late payments and credit utilization ratio. Unlike your personal credit reports, tri-merge reports do not include a summary of soft inquiries.\nThe lender can also order a variety of add-ons with a merged report. For example, mortgage lenders often get specific types of FICO® Scores☉ based on each of a consumer's credit reports. The credit bureaus assign brand names to these types of FICO® Scores that indicate which bureau supplies the information used in the calculation:\n*   FICO® Score 2 (Experian\/Fair Isaac Risk Model v2)\n*   FICO® Score 5 (Equifax Beacon 5)\n*   FICO® Score 4 (TransUnion FICO Risk Score 04)\nLenders can also request a tri-merge report with other versions of the FICO® Score or VantageScore®, or even multiple credit scores based on a single credit report. And merged reports can include more specialized types of scores, such as bankruptcy scores. END