The steady drumbeat of steps during Rohit Chopra’s tenure as CFPB Director to call into question the reliability and predictability of medical debt information in credit underwriting reached a crescendo last week with the CFPB’s issuance of a proposed rule to eliminate the exception in Regulation V (which implements the Fair Credit Reporting Act) that currently allows creditors to obtain and use medical debt information in connection with credit eligibility determinations. … Continue Reading
Credit Reports
CFPB Director Addresses Credit Report Fees Before the Mortgage Bankers Association
As part of the CFPB’s crusade against junk fees, CFPB Director, Rohit Chopra addressed credit report fees in prepared remarks at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Secondary & Capital Markets Conference & Expo 2024. While Director Chopra began his remarks by commenting on the increasing cost of mortgage loan transactions, stating that both consumers and lenders are negatively affected, he focused most of his remarks on the increasing costs of obtaining consumer credit reports.… Continue Reading
CFPB issues letters in support of Connecticut and California bills on medical debt reporting; Connecticut bill enacted
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued two letters in support of state efforts to prohibit medical debt reporting. In March 2024, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra sent a letter to the California State Senate in support of Senate Bill 1061, which would prohibit the practice of including medical bills on credit reports.… Continue Reading
CFPB Spring 2024 Supervisory Highlights looks at consumer reporting companies and furnishers
The CFPB has released the Spring 2024 edition of Supervisory Highlights. The report discusses CFPB examinations in connection with credit reporting and furnishing that were completed from April 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023.
Key findings by CFPB examiners are described below.
Examinations of credit reporting companies (CRCs) found the following deficiencies:
- CRCs failed to timely implement blocks of information after receiving the requisite information relating to an alleged identity theft, without otherwise making a reasonable determination with respect to one of the permitted bases for declining to block such information as provided in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and Regulation V.
CFPB Publishes Consumer Response Annual Report
The CFPB published its Consumer Response Annual Report for 2023, which discusses the consumer complaints received by the CFPB in that year and how companies responded to those complaints. The CFPB monitors consumers’ complaints and companies’ responses in order to glean information about the types of challenges consumers are experiencing with financial products and services.… Continue Reading
Revised Trigger Leads Bill Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives
As previously reported, in 2023 bills were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 4198) and the U.S. Senate (S. 3502) to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to curtail the practice of trigger leads with mortgage loans. While the goals of the bills are the same, the language of the bills differ.… Continue Reading
CFPB files amicus briefs in FDCPA case and also files amicus brief in FCRA case jointly with FTC
The CFPB recently filed two amicus briefs, one in a First Circuit case involving the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the other, which was filed jointly with the Federal Trade Commission, in a Fourth Circuit case involving the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
FDCPA. The FDCPA case is Carrasquillo v.… Continue Reading
CO and NY enact laws to prevent reporting of medical debt to credit bureaus
Colorado and New York are not waiting for the Fair Credit Reporting Act rulemaking to eliminate creditor use of medical debt announced by the CFPB in September 2023. As we previously blogged, in the past two years, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have made significant changes with respect to medical debt collections by removing unpaid medical collections under $500 from consumer credit reports, removing paid medical collections from credit reports, and extending the time period before unpaid medical debt appears on a credit report to one year after the first delinquency.… Continue Reading
CFPB enters into consent order with third-party collector of medical debts to resolve alleged FCRA and FDCPA violations
The CFPB announced last week that it has entered into a consent order with Commonwealth Financial Systems, Inc. (Commonwealth), a third-party debt collection company that collects past-due medical debts and furnishes information about consumers to consumer reporting agencies (CRAs), to resolve Commonwealth’s alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). … Continue Reading
Bills To Curtail Trigger Leads Introduced in Congress
Bills have been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 4198) and the U.S. Senate (S. 3502) to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to curtail the practice of trigger leads with mortgage loans.
The practice is controversial for both consumers and mortgage industry participants.… Continue Reading