--- title: What You Need to Know About Your Credit Score | TIME description: Jill Schlesinger explains what you need to know about your credit score and the changes that are headed our way. canonical: https://time.com/video/wl4h84ni/ og:title: What You Need to Know About Your Credit Score og:description: Jill Schlesinger explains what you need to know about your credit score and the changes that are headed our way. og:url: https://time.com/video/wl4h84ni/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/wl4h84ni/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What You Need to Know About Your Credit Score twitter:description: Jill Schlesinger explains what you need to know about your credit score and the changes that are headed our way. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/wl4h84ni/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # What You Need to Know About Your Credit Score > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: What You Need to Know About Your Credit Score [Watch (HLS stream): What You Need to Know About Your Credit Score](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/wl4h84ni.m3u8) (3:05)  _Published 2016-09-06. Jill Schlesinger explains what you need to know about your credit score and the changes that are headed our way._ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:44 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Credit Scores 101](/video/xfAJXHnw/) ### Credit Scores 101 [How to Improve Your Credit Score](/video/qjf5hmwQ/) ### How to Improve Your Credit Score [Credit Card & Credit Score Myths](/video/PbCkIZQb/) ### Credit Card & Credit Score Myths --- ## Transcript The first phase of credit score reform is going into affect in September. Here to walk us through what that really means is financial expert Jill Schlesinger. Jill thank you for being here. Great to be with you. So, tell me what's going on in September, what's going to happen, what's going to change. So this goes back to this huge lawsuit, it was started by the attorney general in New York, Eric Schneiderman, 31 other states kind of piggy backed onto Settlement and it affects the three credit reporting agencies. So Experion, Equifax and TransUnion. And what everyone was looking at from the regulatory side was why is it so hard to correct errors? Why are these companies being so belligerent in doing so? This settlement actually addresses that issue but even goes somewhat farther because they say, you gotta be much more proactive in helping the consumer change and correct records. Also, they're going to treat medical information very differently. And I think that's important. Mm- kay.. So what does that mean for me as a consumer. Okay, one of the big problems that we've seen on credit reporting has been when I have a late payment for a medical issue. And we have millions of [ MUSIC ] Tons of millions of families that have been affected negatively in their credit scores because of late payments on doctor's bills or emergency. What this new reform is going to really do is give you some leeway. The credit report. Reporting agencies will not report late payments for 180 days and maybe not at all. And is that any late payment or medical? Medical only. And so I think that that's a huge issue. It's going to provide quite a bit of relief to many consumers who've been dinged on their credit scores because of these errors or The medical records that are in their reports. The other piece of this is of course, the own is now is on the reporting industry to kind of get it right. If you don't need to borrow soon, how important is your credit score? I know that you need Good credit practices, you need to be paying things off. But is your score itself very important? You know it's weird I would normally have said say 20 years ago no biggie. Of course if you have a mortgage, and don't need a loan, or you're sitting on piles of cash no big deal. However these credit scores and accurate credit records are starting to actually impact other areas of your financial life. Insurance rates. I mean, that's sort of mind blowing, Maybe a landlord can pull that credit score. Maybe for a job, a potential job they could pull credit in certain states. So I think it's still important and I just have to say this about 10, 000 times. Although a free credit report is available every year to every American, only about half of the country actually goes and looks it up. So annualcreditreport. com is where you look to see whether there are any errors out there, and that's where you start the process of correcting those errors, and Pushing up your score. Great. Jill, thank you so much. 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