The findings focus on consumer relief tied to credit reporting agencies’ responses to complaints as well as medical debt.
01/05/2022 4:30 P.M.
2 minute read
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Director Rohit Chopra, has released a new analysis on consumer complaint responses by the nationwide consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) Equifax, TransUnion and Experian.
“In 2021, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion together reported relief in response to less than 2% of covered complaints, down from nearly 25% of covered complaints in 2019,” according to a news release from the CFPB.
“Credit reporting plays a critical role in consumers’ lives and has an enormous reach beyond consumer financial services. More than 200 million Americans have credit files, and lenders rely on this information to decide whether to approve loans and on what terms. Consumer reporting also informs decisions about employment, insurance, housing, and even essential utilities. For consumers, inaccuracies on credit reports drive up the cost of credit and severely limit opportunities, such as starting a small business or buying a new home,” the CFPB reports.
Consumers submitted more than 700,000 complaints to the CFPB regarding the CRAs from January 2020 through September 2021.
Consumer complaints about inaccurate information on their credit reports are more common than complaints about “any other problem,” according to the bureau.
“Consumers most frequently assert that the inaccurate information belongs to someone else, and consumers often describe being victims of identity theft. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to conduct a review of complaints sent to them through the CFPB where consumers allege there is incomplete or inaccurate information in their consumer reports and the consumer appears to have previously attempted to fix the problem with the company. The companies must then report their determinations and actions for these covered complaints to the CFPB,” it reports.
Medical bills are also one of the main reasons that lead to inaccurate information on consumers’ credit reports, according to the CFPB.
In the first few months of his term as director, Chopra has prioritized student loans and medical debt in collections, ACA International’s Vice President and Senior Counsel of Federal Advocacy Leah Dempsey reports in the latest issue of Collector magazine.
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