Bureau-ready Metro 2 files for short-tenor consumer lending
Send us the export your loan-management system already produces. We map it — including the judgment calls single-pay, title, and lease-to-own products actually require — validate it against the CDIA CRRG, fix what's wrong, and hand back a bureau-ready first file.
Built for
What makes reporting hard here
Your loan system exports a CSV, and the bureaus require Metro 2
Loan-management and servicing platforms produce spreadsheets and reports, not fixed-width files with valid Base, J1/J2, and trailer segments. Bridging that gap by hand is where most first files die, and where most in-house attempts stall for months.
Short-tenor books churn faster than the format expects
A book of 90-day loans turns over four times a year. Every cycle brings opens, payoffs, and status transitions, and each one is a chance to get Date of First Delinquency, Account Status, or the closed-account sequence wrong. Volume of change, not volume of accounts, is what breaks these files.
Your products do not map cleanly to a standard installment loan
Single-pay advances have no meaningful payment schedule. Lease-to-own agreements are not extensions of credit. Split-pay plans end before a normal reporting cycle completes. Guessing at the treatment produces a file that passes structural validation and still misrepresents the tradeline.
Thin-file borrowers make your accuracy the whole file
When a consumer has two tradelines instead of twenty, an error on yours is not diluted — it is most of what the next lender sees. The practical accuracy bar for non-prime furnishing is higher than for prime, and dispute volume reflects that.
Furnishing means inheriting dispute obligations overnight
The moment you report, FCRA §1681s-2 reinvestigation duties attach. ACDVs arrive through e-OSCAR and must be answered within 30 days, with documentation you can produce at exam time. Most lenders in this segment have no structured way to track that.
A rejected file costs you a full cycle
Bureaus reject on invalid status codes, bad date formatting, malformed headers, or a broken trailer. One rejection pushes your data a month downstream — and in a book of short-term loans, a month is a meaningful share of the loan's life.
Send us your export. We hand back a bureau-ready, validated first file.
This is a concierge first-file motion, not a do-it-yourself upload. You give us the raw export from your loan-management or servicing platform; we do the mapping, work through the structural decisions your product type actually requires, run the 240-plus rule CRRG validator, fix the errors with you, generate the fixed-width file, and prepare automated SFTP delivery to the bureaus you choose.
- We auto-detect your column layout from a sample export — no template to fill in first
- We work through account type, terms, and payment-rating treatment for single-pay, title, LTO, and split-pay products rather than defaulting them
- We validate against the CDIA Credit Reporting Resource Guide and show every error in plain language with the fix
- We generate the fixed-width, bureau-ready file and verify it passes before it leaves the system
- We deliver by automated SFTP to Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and Innovis, or hand you the file to deliver yourself
- We give you an honest read on which bureaus your portfolio size can actually get approved for
How your first file comes together
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1. Send a sample export
The raw file from your loan-management or servicing platform — CSV, Excel, or a delimited extract. No cleanup pass, no schema document, no template required. If your data lives in more than one system, send both; consolidating is part of the work.
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2. We map your fields to Metro 2
We auto-detect the column layout and build the mapping, including the decisions your products genuinely require: how a single-payment advance carries terms, how a lease-to-own agreement is characterized, how a title loan reflects collateral. The mapping is saved and reused every cycle.
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3. We validate against the CRRG (240+ rules)
The full rule engine runs across Base Segment, J1/J2, and K-segment logic — status-to-payment-history consistency, DOFD presence, date formatting, header and trailer reconciliation. You see every error and warning in plain language with the correction.
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4. We fix the errors with you
Most first files have real data problems underneath the formatting ones — missing DOFDs, statuses that contradict balances, dates that cannot be true. We work the list with you rather than handing back a report and wishing you luck.
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5. We generate and verify the file
The fixed-width Metro 2 file is generated and re-validated before it goes anywhere. You get the file plus an exportable validation report for your records.
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6. We set up delivery and your monthly cycle
Automated SFTP delivery to the bureaus you chose, on a recurring schedule you control. Bureau responses come back parsed and reconciled, with rejections surfaced as actionable corrections.
Non-prime lender Metro 2 launch checklist
The pre-furnishing steps that keep a small-dollar, title, or lease-to-own first file from getting rejected — and keep you compliant once you start reporting.
- Obtain a furnisher agreement and subscriber code from each bureau
- Get an honest read on portfolio-size thresholds before you commit
- Decide the structural treatment for each product you originate
- Capture a Date of First Delinquency for every delinquent account
- Define how renewals, rollovers, and refinances are reported
Small-dollar & non-prime lender mapping template
How the column headers in a typical loan-management or servicing export line up with Metro 2 / CRRG fields. Use it as the starting point for your saved mapping; examples contain no real PII.
| Your column | Metro 2 field |
|---|---|
| LoanID | Base Segment — Account Number |
| ProductType | Base Segment — Account Type |
| OriginationDate | Base Segment — Date Opened |
| AmountFinanced | Base Segment — Highest Credit / Original Loan Amount |
| CurrentBalance | Base Segment — Current Balance |
| PaymentAmount | Base Segment — Scheduled Monthly Payment Amount |
Compliance you can stand behind
FCRA §1681s-2 furnisher duties
Accuracy and reinvestigation obligations attach the moment you furnish. Dispute tracking with deadline monitoring, documented responses, and exportable records are part of the platform rather than something you assemble separately.
CDIA CRRG conformance
The Metro 2 format and its field-level rules are defined by the CDIA in the Credit Reporting Resource Guide. Our 240-plus rule engine encodes those rules so files conform to the standard the bureaus actually enforce.
Complete and accurate portfolio reporting
Reporting only delinquent accounts while omitting performing ones is not permitted. Validation is built around the assumption that you furnish the whole book you choose to report.
Obsolescence and re-aging protection
Date of First Delinquency handling and the seven-year obsolescence boundary are enforced in validation. Records past the reporting window are omitted rather than silently re-aged.
Auditable history with SSN redaction
Every field change is tracked with before/after values and automatic SSN redaction, exportable for CFPB or state examinations without exposing consumer identifiers.
Frequently asked questions
How small can my portfolio be and still get approved?
Each bureau approves furnishers independently and may weigh portfolio size. Equifax's prospective-furnisher guidance states no minimum data requirement, though furnishers reporting fewer than 500 accounts a month may need a monitoring subscription; Innovis in practice applies a much higher threshold that most small books will not clear. Very small portfolios sometimes cannot get approved directly at all, in which case reporting through an aggregator is the realistic path. Send us your volume and we will give you a straight answer before you buy anything.
My loans are only 30 to 90 days. Is that reportable?
Yes. Short tenor is not the obstacle — a Metro 2 record carries up to 24 months of payment history and short-term loans are reported routinely. The real work is handling the churn: opens, payoffs, and closed-account transitions every cycle, plus accounts whose entire life falls between two monthly files. Those cases need deliberate handling, which is exactly what the first-file review covers.
How do you report a product that isn't really a loan?
Lease-to-own and rental-purchase agreements are governed by state RTO statutes rather than credit law, and forcing them into a standard installment shape produces a tradeline that validates cleanly and describes the wrong thing. We work from your actual agreement to settle how it is characterized, how the payment schedule is expressed, and how each ending — completion, early buyout, or return — is reported. A return is not a default and should never read as a charge-off.
What does the first-file review cost?
The first-file review is free. You send a sample export, we map and validate it, and you get back the validated file and the error report — plus an honest assessment of what your portfolio can get approved for. If it turns out furnishing does not make sense for your book yet, we will tell you that rather than sell you a plan.
Do I have to report to all four bureaus?
No. You choose your destinations, and each requires its own furnisher agreement and subscriber code. Most lenders in this segment start with one or two and expand later. Adding a bureau afterward does not mean redoing your mapping — it is another delivery target on the same file.
What about the subprime and alternative-data bureaus?
Clarity, DataX, Teletrack, FactorTrust, and MicroBilt are separate databases from the nationwide file, with separate contributor agreements — furnishing to Equifax does not put your data into DataX. Those destinations are not live for us yet; several are in contributor onboarding. Our alternative-data page lays out exactly where each one stands and lets you register interest.
Who handles disputes once we start reporting?
You remain the furnisher of record and own the reinvestigation obligation, but the workflow lives in the platform: ACDVs are tracked with deadline monitoring, responses are documented, and the whole history is exportable for examination. The obligation is yours; the machinery for meeting it is ours.
Other solutions
Get a validated first file
Send us a sample export and we'll come back with a bureau-ready Metro 2 file, the full validation report, and an honest read on what your portfolio can get approved for.