Executive Change: Barrett Burns to VantageScore Solutions

VantageScore Solutions, LLC, a newly formed company launched by the three national credit reporting companies in March to offer the marketplace a highly predictive and consistent scoring approach to determine consumer creditworthiness, announced today the appointment of Barrett Burns as president and CEO, effective immediately.

Burns, 60, has more than three decades of professional experience in risk and credit management. He has held a diverse number of senior leadership positions at major financial institutions, including Citibank, U.S. Trust, Ford Motor Credit, and Bank One. His distinguished track record includes credit policy, operations management, product development, and the design and execution of successful enterprise-wide growth strategies.

"VantageScore(SM) is a decidedly superior scoring methodology that fills a void in the market by providing lenders with choices in credit scoring," Burns said. "It allows credit grantors to evaluate consumer creditworthiness with significantly greater precision, and consumers will be able to more readily understand their credit scores and the factors that determine them. I'm confident that once VantageScore's advantages are widely understood, it will become a market leader."

Consumer credit scores are determined by data obtained from the national credit reporting companies. Credit scores have traditionally varied widely because the provided data was subsequently analyzed using different scoring models. VantageScore is a predictive scoring system that was created jointly by Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It can be uniformly applied to data from any of the three credit reporting companies, thereby allowing credit grantors to make more precise and consistent credit evaluations. VantageScore also leverages broader payment information to evaluate the creditworthiness of consumers with a limited credit history.

Prior to joining VantageScore Solutions, Burns was the executive vice president heading the National Private Banking Group of U.S. Trust and a member of both U.S. Trust's Executive Committee and the Senior Management Team of its parent company, The Charles Schwab Corporation. Previously, he served as executive vice president of global risk management at Ford Motor Credit Company, where he was also a member of the auto finance organization's Management Committee and senior personnel, treasury, and executive oversight committees.