On April 11, 2023, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion announced that they removed unpaid medical collections under $500 from consumer credit reports. The three companies, in July 2022, previously removed paid medical collections from credit reports, and extended the delay in medical collection reporting from sixth months after the first delinquency to one year after the first delinquency.… Continue Reading

We review the following findings and discuss their compliance implications: FCRA violations based on obtaining credit reports without a permissible purpose, incorrectly reporting the date of first delinquency, failing to conduct reasonable dispute investigations; Reg. E violations based on waivers of consumers’ dispute rights, use of incorrect date to determine timeliness of error notices, providing inadequate notices of error investigation results; and Reg.… Continue Reading

In a new report on consumer credit trends, the CFPB looks at how recent changes to the public record data standards used by the “Big 3” consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) have affected consumers’ credit reports and  credit scores.  The data used in the report comes from the CFPB’s Consumer Credit Panel, which the report describes as “a longitudinal, nationally-representative sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records maintained by one of the three nationwide [CRAs].”… Continue Reading

Yesterday we blogged about CFPB Bulletin 2013-09, which examined the CFPB’s expectations of furnishers investigating disputes under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The FCRA was also the topic of a panel sponsored by the Consumer Financial Services Committee at the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco on Friday, August 9.… Continue Reading

On May 7, the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance will hold a hearing titled “Credit Reports: What Accuracy and Errors Mean for Consumers.” 

The first witness panel consists of Corey Stone, the CFPB’s Assistant Director for Deposits, Cash, Collections, and Reporting Markets, and Maneesha Mithal, the FTC’s Associate Director for the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.… Continue Reading

The CFPB has announced that its complaint system has begun taking complaints about credit reports.  The issues a consumer can select to describe his or her complaint are: (1) incorrect information on the consumer’s credit report, (2) a consumer reporting agency’s investigation, (3) improper use of a credit report, (4) inability to obtain a credit report or credit score, and (5) problems with credit monitoring or identity protection services. … Continue Reading

Credit ScoresTwo days before its July 21 debut, the CFPB released a report on credit scores  that describes the industry and credit scoring process, examines the ways credit scores are obtained and used, and discusses the differences between scores obtained by consumers and creditors..  Dodd-Frank required the CFPB to study those differences and whether they disadvantage consumers. … Continue Reading