FACTA Information

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, H.R. 2622, was signed by President George W Bush on December 4th, 2003. This followed shortly after Congressional passage of the Act on November 22, 2003. The act amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The FACT Act makes the expiring uniform national consumer protection standards permanent. Seeing the uniform national standards permanent was the top priority of the CDIA and its member companies. Congress also made changes to the FCRA that they feel will impact on the accuracy of credit reports and protect against identity theft. The act also contains language mandating free access to credit reports for consumers. In addition to these changes, the Act gives the Federal Trade Commission regulatory powers in a number of areas that directly affect consumer reporting agencies.

To learn how consumers, users, furnishers, bureaus and credit reporting agencies interact please click here to view our helpful chart.

Review of the Amendments

Uniform National Standards
Makes permanent the uniform national standards first enacted in 1996 and that were due to expire on December 31, 2003. Those standard include for example  reinvestigation time frames, affiliate sharing, prescreening, time restriction standards and retention of obsolete information, adverse-action notice obligations and furnisher duties.

Free File Disclosures
Nationwide consumer reporting agencies (have duty to provide free disclosures) must provide a consumer with one free disclosure at the consumer's request.

Free disclosure duties will be made via a centralized source, within 15 days of request and reinvestigations must be completed within 45 days.

The FTC must consider the significant demands resulting from free reports, and appropriate means to ensure bureaus can meet such demands. The regulations must provide for an orderly transition by nationwide bureaus to the centralized system in a manner that does not temporarily overwhelm such bureaus and does not deny creditors and consumers access to reports on a time-sensitive manner.

Credit Score Disclosure
A consumer may request a credit score and will pay a fair and reasonable price for it

Reinvestigation Procedures
Resellers (credit bureaus) have significant new duties to conduct reinvestigations, including the duty to convey consumer disputes back to the consumer reporting agency from which it obtained the consumer report

Identity Theft Provisions
Tradeline Blocking- A credit reporting agency must block any information from being reported in the file of a consumer where the consumer provides an identity theft report and where the data is a result of a crime.

Fraud Alerts
Supply a fraud alert in a consumer's file upon request of a consumer who is or is about to become a victim of identity theft.

A consumer reporting agency must notify a requester of a credit report of a discrepancy in address if the request includes an address that substantially differs from the address on file.

The FTC must establish and implement a media and distribution campaign to teach the public how to prevent identity theft no later than two years after the date of enactment.

Consumer reporting agencies must submit an annual summary report to the FTC on consumer complaints they receive on identity theft or fraud alerts.

Who are consumers, users, furnishers, bureaus and credit reporting agencies? Please click here to view our helpful chart and definitions.