Spot data anomalies with Delta’s month-on-month file comparison

It’s Monday morning, and your credit operations manager gets a call. Last month’s credit file submission has gone through to the bureau, but something’s not right. A spot check reveals that 8% of your current customers were accidentally marked as “delinquent” due to a status code mapping error. Not enough for the bureau’s automated systems to flag and reject, but enough to tank those customers’ credit scores.

Your team now faces weeks of corrections, and potentially hundreds of customer complaints and regulatory scrutiny. Meanwhile, those affected customers are being denied services, mortgages and loans, or forced into higher interest rates because their credit reports falsely show missed payments.

Sound familiar? If you’ve worked in credit operations for more than five minutes, you’ve probably lived through some version of this nightmare.

The Silent Data Quality Crisis

Here’s the scary truth: bureau validation systems are designed to catch the most egregious errors such as files that are completely corrupted or missing mandatory fields. But research shows they routinely miss subtler problems that can be just as damaging. Industry data reveals that 29% of the surveyed UK adults who checked their credit report found mistakes.

The errors that slip through bureau validation:

• 8-12% of customers incorrectly marked as delinquent or in default
• Addresses are formatted or reported poorly
• Names are misformated and reported in a way that creates a second identity 
• People being reported as “deceased” which is unbelievably hard to resolve.
• Payment histories corrupted affecting thousands of customers in a single product category
• Balance amounts inflated by factors of 10 or 100 due to decimal point errors

These “partial” errors are particularly dangerous because they:

1. Pass automated validation - Bureau systems use percentage thresholds that allow substantial error rates before triggering rejection
2. Cause financial harm - False delinquencies can cost customers thousands in higher interest rates over seven years
3. Are hard to detect manually - Spot checks often miss systematic patterns affecting specific customer segments
4. Create long-term damage - Payment history errors remain on credit reports for seven years, even after correction

These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. These are stories from real credit operations teams who’ve learned the hard way that manual spot-checks aren’t enough.

Enter Delta’s Month-on-Month Comparison

We built Delta’s new comparison feature because research shows that significant data quality issues affect millions of consumers. Our automated month-on-month analysis catches subtle anomalies that bureau validation systems routinely miss, protecting both your customers and your reputation.

How it works: Real-time Report Intelligence

The moment you upload your monthly file, Delta automatically compares it against your previous submission across multiple dimensions:

Volume Analysis

• Record count variations with percentage change highlighting
• Account status distribution shifts
• Product mix changes that might indicate extraction issues

Financial Validation

• Outstanding balance trend analysis
• Payment amount consistency checks
• Loss Given Default (LGD) & Exposure at Default (EAD)

Operational Flags

• Status code transition logic validation
• Date field consistency checks
• Mandatory field completeness comparison

Smart Alerting, Not Noise

Unlike legacy providers who treat reporting tools as an afterthought, Delta gets regular feature updates and improvements based on user feedback. Your reporting capabilities improve over time instead of stagnating.

What This Means for Your Team

Delta flags every minor variance and uses intelligent thresholds to highlight genuinely concerning changes while filtering out expected business fluctuations.

For example:

• ✅ 5% increase in file size during peak lending season: Normal business growth
• ⚠️ 40% decrease in file size with no business explanation: Critical investigation needed
• ✅ Seasonal 2-3% uptick in late payments: Expected economic pattern
• ⚠️ 15% of accounts suddenly showing as “defaulted”: Status mapping error likely

Real-World Impact: What Our Customers Are Saying

We managed to spot and fix errors in reporting that are happening with our traditional bureaus and that we have never spotted before. We had customers that weren't being reported which we have managed to report just by running the data through Delta.

- Asif Nadeem, Chief Transformation Officer, Evlo

Credit teams consistently tell us Delta is "a pleasure to use" - words you never hear about credit bureau reporting.

The Bigger Picture: Building Trust Through Quality

In an industry where research shows that 1 in 3 of the surveyed UK adults have credit report errors that can result in less favourable loan terms, getting monthly reporting right is both an operational necessity and an ethical imperative. Each error in credit reporting can affect someone’s ability to get a mortgage, secure a loan, or even qualify for competitive interest rates.

Delta’s comparison feature is part of our broader mission to make credit information sharing more accurate, efficient, and reliable for everyone.

Getting Started

See how Delta's pre-submission validation can eliminate your monthly correction cycles. Book a demo and we'll show you exactly how much time Delta can save your reporting team and how you can use it as a data validation tool before reporting into the wider bureau ecosystem.

Start with Delta →

About Infact: We’re building the next generation of credit information infrastructure, starting with tools that help lenders ensure data quality and protect their customers. Delta is just the beginning. Join us in transforming how credit information flows through the financial system.