Contact: Laine Williams, (202) 897-4757, lwilliams@allonadvocacy.com
August 5, 2024, Washington, DC – The Financial Data and Technology Association of North America (FDATA), a trade association representing more than 30 financial technology companies and consumer-permissioned data access platforms in Canada and the United States, today submitted a comment in response to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (“CFPB” or “Bureau”) proposed rule to limit creditors from obtaining or using information on medical debts for credit eligibility determinations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”).
While FDATA North America takes no position on the underlying merits of the CFPB’s proposed rule, it raised significant operational concerns about the practical implementation of the rule for consumer-permissioned open banking platforms that function as Consumer Reporting Agencies (“CRAs”). FDATA North America underscored that absent an affirmative requirement for data providers to identify medical debts as such, the current lack of a uniform mechanism for open banking platforms to identify whether an account connected by a consumer is a medical debt presents a major compliance challenge.
FDATA North America highlighted that for open banking platforms to comply with the CFPB’s proposed medical debt rule, it is essential that lenders affirmatively identify accounts as medical debts whenever a consumer grants data access to a third-party platform. Without this requirement, platforms will struggle to determine with certainty whether an account is a medical debt, leading to compliance challenges with the Bureau’s proposed rule.
FDATA North America called for the CFPB to mandate that data providers within consumer-permissioned ecosystems disclose the type of account from which the consumer is seeking to share data to ensure effective compliance. This measure would ensure that open banking platforms, when regulated as CRAs, have access to the same account information currently available in the traditional CRA space.
A full copy of the letter is available here.
