Agencies publish final rules and guidelines to promote accurate reports about consumers

The federal financial regulatory agencies and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have published final rules and guidelines to promote the accuracy and integrity of information furnished to credit bureaus and other consumer reporting agencies, and widely used to determine consumers' eligibility for credit, employment, insurance, and rental housing. As required by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Trade Commission, National Credit Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Office of Thrift Supervision are publishing these final rules and guidelines, with an effective date of July 1, 2010. Under the rules, entities that furnish information about consumers to consumer reporting agencies generally must include a consumer's credit limit in the information provided. The federal agencies are also publishing an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to identify possible additions to the information that furnishers must provide to consumer reporting agencies, such as the account opening date. Also, under the rules, if a consumer believes his or her credit report includes inaccurate information, the consumer may submit a dispute directly to the entity that provided the information to the consumer reporting agency, and that entity must investigate the dispute. The rules do not change a consumer's ability to submit a dispute to a consumer reporting agency or a furnisher's duty to investigate a dispute referred by a reporting agency. For Federal Register Notice: Final Rules, Part I, click here. For Federal Register Notice: Final Rules, Part II, click here.