Equifax history

In the fall of 1901, the company dispatched a salesman to the Northeast to drum up business in the home offices of the nation's largest insurance companies.

As a result of its growing insurance business, Guy Woolford opened a second company office in Dallas, Texas, in March 1902.

In April 1903 Retail Credit closed its Augusta office, after clearly noting signs that the branch would not become profitable.

In 1904 a fourth office was opened in Kansas City, Missouri.

For instance, in 1908 the company began issuing reports for automobile liability insurers.

1913: Retail Credit Company incorporated in 1913 and continued to grow its insurance-related business.

By 1915 Retail Credit's earliest work compiling lists of good and bad credit risks in the Atlanta area had dwindled to almost nothing.

1920: Retail Credit Company continues to grow.

The increased competition resulted in a serious slump in Retail Credit's life insurance and credit reporting activities in 1921.

1923: The company forms Credit Service Exchange, a credit rating operations firm.

1930: The Retail Credit Company has 81 branch offices throughout North America.

In 1934 Retail Credit purchased a Brooklyn credit agency, Retailers Commercial Agency, Inc.

By 1937 nearly three quarters of all the company's inspection forms were being filled out by full-time investigators, operating out of 96 Retail Credit offices in cities across North America.

In 1941, when the war began for the United States, the company was providing 7.5 million reports a year; many of its inspectors, however, were drafted into the military and other employees left the enterprise to engage in war-related endeavors.

By 1944 the volume of reports produced had sunk to six million.

The company sold stock to the public for the first time in 1965.

They took their company, TRW, into the credit reporting industry in 1968 by acquiring a company called Credit Data.

In 1971, Retail’s credit reporting also began to be governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which took effect in April of 1971.

In 1975, Retail Credit was so hated and distrusted that it decided to change its name to Equifax in the hopes that rebranding would shake off some of its bad reputation.

The company continued to see massive growth and rebranded as Equifax in 1976.

Began Diversifying in 1979

1986: The company amasses data on more than 150 million consumers in 28 states.

In April 1988 the company established a marketing services division, whose first project was to develop a direct-mail program to sell home mortgages for a Midwestern insurance company.

Equifax also divested itself of two unprofitable units in 1989, Equifax Insurance Systems and Enercon, Inc.

In addition to formation of a technology division, brought about by the consolidation of the company's activities in that field, Equifax also acquired Telecredit, Inc., a Los Angeles credit bureau that provided check and credit card authorization services, for $457 million in 1990.

Late in 1991, the company bought out its British partner to form Equifax Europe.

In mid-1992 Equifax agreed to provide consumers with a toll-free number and to begin investigating disputes within 30 days.

With the 1993 acquisition of Integratec Inc., Equifax gained a leading provider of debt collection and other back-office services for credit card issuers and other lenders.

By 1994 Equifax had acquired three more healthcare information firms, giving it a substantial presence in claims processing.

In July 1995 Equifax acquired U.K.-based Infocheck Group Limited and TecniCob S.A., a French payment services firm.

Once GUS bought the company in 1996, it rebranded as Experian.

The company also had a division selling specialist credit information to the insurance industry but spun off this service, including the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) database as ChoicePoint in 1997.

Equifax formerly offered digital certification services, which it sold to GeoTrust in September 2001.

In 2002, the business acquired TrueCredit.com and entered the direct-to-consumer market, giving consumers access to services online.

In October 2010, Equifax announced it was acquiring Anakam, an identity verification software company headquartered in San Diego, California, which invented and pioneered SMS (text-message based) two-factor authentication.

Equifax purchased eThority, a business intelligence (BI) company headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, in October 2011. eThority is partnering with TALX, a St Louis-based business unit of Equifax, and remained in Charleston.

Veda had previously acquired the Australian market research and opinion polling company ReachTEL in September 2015., which continues to produce opinion polls in Australia.

In February 2016, Equifax acquired the Australasian company Veda, the largest credit reference agency in Australia at the time.

In September 2017, Equifax announced it had suffered a security breach.

In 2020, Experian had a data breach that impacted up to 24 million South African consumers and 800,000 businesses.