TransUnion started as the parent of a railcar leasing business. Today it keeps records of how people borrow and repay. Lenders use its credit reports to decide who gets a card, a car loan or a mortgage. It is one of three national credit bureaus in the United States, alongside Equifax and Experian. When TransUnion filed in 2015, private equity had owned it for years. It was returning to the public market as a data and analytics company.

A Chicago Credit Bureau

TransUnion began in 1968 as a holding company for a railcar leasing business. A year later it bought a Chicago credit bureau, and credit grew into its main line of work. The bet was that credit files, gathered on a national scale and kept up to date, would become essential to lending. Computers made that possible. Over time TransUnion gathered files on hundreds of millions of people.

Fraud, Identity and Neustar

TransUnion priced at $22.50 a share in June 2015. Advent and Goldman Sachs had bought it in 2012. As a public company it bought data firms, including Neustar in 2021, and expanded overseas. Its data now goes into fraud prevention, marketing and identity checks as well as lending. Like its rivals, it faces close scrutiny from regulators. TransUnion remains public, with headquarters in Chicago.

Cover: Corner of Lake and La Salle Streets, Chicago, Marine Bank Building in the Year 1864, Raoul Varin. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a Chicago bank corner (credit).