ComEd Program Helps Customers With Their Credit Scores

ComEd collaborated with Working Credit to offer one-on-one support to help customers improve their credit scores. Photo provided by Avoq.
ComEd collaborated with Working Credit to offer one-on-one support to help customers improve their credit scores. Photo provided by Avoq.

ComEd Program Helps Customers With Their Credit Scores

By Tia Carol Jones

ComEd has collaborated with Working Credit on a program that is meant to help customers improve their credit scores. Credit Empowerment is a free program that ComEd launched in July 2023.

Working Credit is a non-profit organization that helps people build strong credit profiles. ComEd and Working Credit had conversations to collaborate because the organization wanted to support vulnerable people and educate them about their financial health. Working Credit saw an opportunity to assist ComEd customers.

Linda Rhodes, Senior Manager of Customer Experience at ComEd, said that Credit Empowerment is designed to expand ComEd’s reach to low-income customers to provide assistance for bill payment and financial strength.

“What this one adds to our portfolio is that it is a program that offers more sustainable bill assistance resources, because what it does is it leverages a knowledgeable nonprofit, Working Credit, and it leverages them and their experts to educate our customers who sign up about how the credit system works,” Rhodes said.

Customers participate in a webinar about how the system works, with the goal being to help the customer raise their credit score. Once the customer raises their credit score, it can enable them to have stronger buying power and stronger financial health. Customers enrolled in the program also receive 12 months of one-on-one counseling and assistance with a credit action plan.

According to Rhodes, Working Credit pulled preliminary results for ComEd, based on six months of data. Typically, Working Credit provides measurements after 12 months of participation. The data shows that 53% of the participants of the subset that were surveyed have already improved their credit scores, 3% of the participants reduced their unpaid collections debt and 3% of participants who have credit cards were able to reduce their credit card balance to less than 30% of the credit limit. ComEd is excited to work with Working Credit through the next few months to get 12 months of results to measure the program.

Rhodes said that customers have been able to do things as a result of participating in Credit Empowerment that they weren’t able to do before enrolling in the credit counseling and because their credit scores were so low. Rhodes has heard about customers getting reasonable car loans and reasonable rental agreements for apartments.

“The sentiment from a lot of the customers who Working Credit has interviewed also includes just an overall sense of feedback about how they signed up because they wanted to build their credit … feedback received from some customers has been that they are very excited about the fact that they can tell they are on the path to build their credit even more than they’ve been able to do just in six initial months in the program,” Rhodes said. She added that customers are appreciative of this education that helps enlighten them to opportunities they have because of their increased credit scores.

ComEd also has the Catch Up and Save program, which has a debt forgiveness component called the Supplemental Arrearage Reduction Program (SARP). Customers who are able to pay their bills on a monthly basis, with each on time payment that get $83.33 that is forgiven on their past due balance. The goal is to help the customers catch up. The program is combined with free energy efficiency products and services, an energy efficiency kit that provides customers with tools that help them use less energy.

To enroll in Credit Empowerment, visit ComEd.com/CreditEmpowerment or call 1-800-334-7661. For more information about energy efficiency and bill assistance programs from ComEd, visit ComEd.com/WaysToSave.

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