Triggers

A credit trigger is a signal from a credit bureau that a consumer's file registered a new inquiry, which usually means the consumer just applied for credit: a mortgage, an auto loan, a credit card, a personal loan. Each morning Equifax reports every US consumer whose file had an inquiry the day before, with their scores and credit attributes as of that day. A trigger alert tells you when one of those consumers is someone you care about. The value is timing. The consumer is in market right now, and the first lender to make a relevant offer has the advantage.

A prescreen answers "who would qualify for my offer today?" from a monthly snapshot of the bureau's file, whether or not those consumers are shopping. A trigger answers "who applied for credit yesterday and fits my criteria?" It is the one signal that carries both intent and eligibility, because the consumer just acted and your filters check their credit profile as of that same day. Many lenders use both: a prescreen through LeadsIQ for broad campaigns, and triggers for the consumers who are in market now.

Credit Monitoring is consumer-facing: your customers log in to track their own credit. Account Monitoring is a risk tool: your portfolio team watches the accounts you hold for early signs of trouble. Credit Trigger Alerts is a retention and acquisition tool: it tells you when a customer or a qualified prospect is shopping for credit, so you can make a firm offer before a competitor does. The data comes from the same bureaus, but each product does a different job and runs under a different permissible purpose.

A watchlist monitor watches only the consumers you upload, usually your own customers, past applicants and borrowers. This is the retention and recapture case: you learn when someone you already serve is shopping elsewhere. A market monitor needs no list. It watches every consumer in the daily file and returns anyone who meets your criteria, which is the prospecting case and runs under a firm offer of credit. Mortgage triggers are watchlist-only under federal law; the other trigger types can run either way.

Yes, for your own customers. The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, in force since March 4, 2026, amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act so that a mortgage trigger lead may go only to a lender that originated or services the consumer's current mortgage, or to a bank or credit union that holds an account for the consumer, unless the consumer has given explicit consent, and only for a firm offer of credit. In practice, a lender can watch its own borrowers and account holders for mortgage shopping, and nobody can buy strangers. Credit Trigger Alerts enforces this in the product: mortgage and home-equity triggers run only on a watchlist under a certified existing relationship, and a monitor that breaks the rule cannot be switched on.

Trigger alerts are prescreened marketing under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so each one must lead to a firm offer of credit: an offer you will honor if the consumer responds and still meets your criteria. Every monitor declares the purpose it runs under, and it cannot be activated unless your account is certified for that purpose. CRS works with you during onboarding to confirm the right framework for your program, since it depends on whether you are watching your own customers or prospecting, and on which trigger types you use.

Yes, that is the basis of the program. Each alert is treated as a firm offer made, and a promotional inquiry is posted to the consumer's bureau file for every alert delivered, whether or not you end up contacting the person. That is why the number of alerts matters: build monitors around offers you are ready to extend, size them with a test run, and pause or narrow any monitor you are not working.

No. The promotional inquiry posted for an alert is a soft inquiry. It appears only on the consumer's own copy of their file, is not visible to other lenders, and does not affect the consumer's credit score.

Consumers who have opted out of prescreened offers and consumers with a fraud alert on their credit file are never alerted. Those exclusions are applied before an alert is created, and they cannot be turned off. On top of them you can upload your own suppression lists, such as do-not-contact lists or existing customers you do not want prospected, and set a cool-off so the same consumer is not alerted again within a set number of days. Criteria that act as demographic proxies cannot be used as filters at all.

The same morning. The bureau delivers its daily file early, and each account's alerts for that day are ready within hours. One signed webhook tells you they are ready, with the count for each monitor, and you read them through the API or the daily file. Alerts also have an age limit, three days by default, so a delayed bureau file never sends you a wave of stale leads. Speed matters: the consumer is comparing offers now, and the advantage goes to the first relevant contact.

Run a test. A test run replays your monitor over up to 90 days of recent trigger history and returns how many alerts it would have produced, by day, by segment and by trigger type, without creating any alerts, disclosing any consumer or reporting anything to the bureau. Counts are very sensitive to definitions: the score model you choose, a $10,000 rather than a $20,000 balance threshold, or the states you exclude can double or halve the volume, so every program is sized before it goes live.

Per alert, not per name watched. You pay for each alert delivered, so you can load your entire book and pay only when someone on it applies for credit and passes your filters. An alert that fires for two trigger types on the same day counts once. Test runs and sandbox activity are never billed. Pricing is tiered by monthly volume, and mortgage alerts are priced above other types.

We tell you, and we do not guess. Before anyone on your list can alert, they have to be matched to the right consumer in the bureau's records, and real lists are messy: people move, names repeat, and relatives share addresses. Credit Trigger Alerts repairs common list damage automatically, such as ZIP codes that lost their leading zeros, and returns a matchability report: who was matched, who was not, why, and which fields would raise your match rate. When the evidence is weak, the match is refused rather than risk sending you a stranger's credit event. Unmatched members are retried every month against the newest bureau data.

Your own reference ID, any passthrough fields you attached such as a loan officer or a campaign code, the monitor and segment that matched, the trigger reasons, and the scores and attributes your data package allows, each as of the trigger day. Where your agreement does not cover an exact score, you receive a 20-point band such as 620–639. Every alert has the same shape whatever the trigger type, so you integrate once. Social Security numbers are never returned, and bureau identifiers are never exposed.

Yes. Every alert keeps its full record: which triggers fired and when, which segment and filter values qualified it, the monitor version that produced it, the match confidence, and the results of the purpose, entitlement and suppression checks. Editing a monitor creates a new version rather than rewriting history, and alert records are kept for at least seven years. When a customer, an auditor or a regulator asks why, the answer is one call away.

The value of a trigger is realized in the response, not the alert. Contact quickly, because the consumer is comparing offers in the days after an application. Lead with an offer that fits what they applied for: a mortgage shopper on your book is a refinance or purchase conversation, and an unsecured-loan shopper carrying high card balances is a consolidation conversation. Use segments to route your best tiers to your best people. And pause any monitor your team is not working, because every alert is reported to the bureau as an offer made.

Yes. A platform integrates once with a partner credential, creates an account for each lender it serves, and runs the program on that lender's behalf. Each lender remains the certified end user of the bureau data, completes its own certification, and has its inquiries posted under its own bureau membership. The platform sees usage across all of its lenders but cannot see a lender's lists or alerts except through that lender's own access.

No, and that is the core of the CRS advantage. CRS maintains the bureau connection, the daily data feed, the matching and the inquiry reporting, so you integrate once with CRS instead of building and maintaining a bureau integration. You complete certification for your program during onboarding, and CRS handles the rest.