Although there is no consensus on whether credit repair companies are worth the money they charge (Experian, one of the foremost credit monitoring services, says they are not), they remain one option for people who are trying to repair their credit. To that end, as Black News reported, The Credit Bros, run by Christopher Watson and Aaron Steede, is emerging as a popular and trusted choice for Black people who are looking to utilize professional help.
Watson and Steele prefer to focus on factual disputing, which, according to the Federal Trade Commission, involves contacting both the business that reported information on your credit report and the credit bureau to inform them that you want to dispute information contained on your report.
In addition to this approach, the pair looks to educate their customers on tenets of personal finance, like budgeting strategies or financial planning.
According to their website, they are focused on helping their customers improve their credit scores so they can have access to homeownership, a path to building wealth that has historically been denied to Black Americans.
They also differentiate themselves from their competitors by offering a flat $100 monthly fee, which also comes with a 90-day guarantee.
Effectively, if a customer spends $300 and doesn’t get the results they are looking for, they can get their money back.
According to CNBC, credit scores, which are necessary to provide access to homeownership, are not necessarily race-neutral but can be affected by structural racism.
Black people, on average, are more likely to report having a low or no credit score.
A representative survey conducted in 2023 indicated that 50% of Black Americans reported having low or no credit scores at all, compared to 37% of white Americans.
According to Frederick Wherry, the Director of the Dignity and Debt Network, a credit score is “your passport to everything that you need to do as an adult.”
However, Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute, said that they are not without tinges of racial bias.
“Credit scores are based on past performance,” Klein told CNBC. “The further we go back in history, the deeper the structural racism in the United States was.”
Sally Taylor, the Vice President and General Manager at FICO, acknowledged that although credit scores didn’t create economic disparities, they do, however, offer a measure of them.
“It’s important to note that credit scores didn’t
create some of the social and economic disparities. They simply reflect the social economic disparities that are out there. The conversation should focus on addressing the root cause of these differences.”RELATED CONTENT: Is The Credit Score System Holding Black People Back? Dr. Bernice King and Ashley Bell Think So