Equifax to Pay $15 Million Fine for Credit Reporting Errors
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has fined Equifax $15 million for its failure to conduct proper investigations of consumer disputes. The CFPB found Equifax ignored consumer documents and evidence submitted with disputes, allowed previously deleted inaccuracies to be reinserted into credit reports, provided confusing and conflicting letters to consumers about the results of its investigations, and used flawed software code which led to inaccurate credit scores.
Equifax is a nationwide consumer reporting agency and one of the three major consumer reporting agencies in the United States. It aggregates data about most adult consumers and sells that data to its customers in the form of consumer reports that are used by lenders, employers, landlords, and others to make important decisions about consumers. Equifax processes approximately 765,000 disputes each month.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires consumer reporting agencies to investigate the accuracy of disputed information and take steps to ensure consumers’ credit reports are accurate. For example, consumer reporting agencies must provide notice of a consumer dispute to the furnisher who provided the disputed information, conduct reasonable investigations to determine whether the disputed information is inaccurate, and provide the results of the investigation to the consumer.
The CFPB says that “Equifax violated the FCRA’s requirements for investigating and processing consumer disputes and assuring maximum possible accuracy of information on its consumer reports.” CFPB’s order says Equifax harmed consumers by:
- Failing to thoroughly investigate consumer disputes: Equifax’s process for submitting disputes limits the ability of consumers to fully and accurately describe their disputes. In many cases, Equifax also failed to consider relevant information submitted by consumers, sometimes not looking at the information at all. Then, after Equifax forwarded information about a dispute to a furnisher, it did not meaningfully consider whether the furnisher’s response made sense, sometimes ignoring information it had that contradicted the furnisher’s response. Finally, the resulting letters Equifax sent to consumers sometimes contained confusing or contradictory statements, such as both “this has been verified as accurate” and “this item has been deleted.”
- Putting previously deleted errors back on credit reports and failing to block identity- theft related information: Equifax did not have systems to detect information that was previously removed and block that information from again appearing on the consumer’s credit report. In addition, Equifax also had no process to identify situations where a consumer is forced to send another dispute about the same inaccurate information because Equifax failed to correct the information the first time, or because Equifax reported information that had previously been corrected. Equifax’s policies limited consumers’ ability to dispute inaccurate information being put on their credit report. Finally, Equifax reported credit information that it should have blocked because the information resulted from identity theft.
- Sharing inaccurate credit scores and data about consumers with lenders: Coding errors in Equifax’s internal software caused the company to miscalculate and share inaccurate credit scores for several hundred thousand consumers. The company also reported the same credit accounts multiple times for more than 50,000 consumers.
