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amount of time that adverse information 
about these accounts may appear on a per-
son’s consumer report; 
(ii) eliminate CRAs’ discretion to de-
termine the relevancy of materials provided 
by consumers to support their dispute 
claims by instead requiring them to pass 
all material onto furnishers and elimi-
nating CRA’s discretion to deem some dis-
putes frivolous or irrelevant when a con-
sumer resubmits a claim that they believe 
has been inadequately resolved; 
(iii) enhance educational content on 
CRAs’ websites to improve consumers’ un-
derstanding of the dispute process and to 
make it easier for all consumers to initiate 
claims, including by providing these disclo-
sures in other languages besides English; 
and 
(iv) create a new consumer right to 
appeal reviews by CRAs and furnishers of 
the initial disputes. 
(3) INJUNCTIVE RELIEF.— 
(A) Despite the fact that the FCRA cur-
rently provides implicit authority for injunctive 
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relief, consumers have been prevented from ex-
ercising this right against CRAs. Legislation 
explicitly clarifying this right is intended to un-
derscore congressional intent that injunctive re-
lief should be viewed as a remedy available to 
consumers. 
(B) Myriad findings by the courts, regu-
lators, consumers, and consumer advocates 
make clear that CRAs have failed to establish 
adequate standards for the accuracy and com-
pleteness of consumer reports, yet the nation-
wide CRAs have demonstrated little willingness 
to voluntarily retool their policies and proce-
dures to fix the problems. 
(C) Providing courts with explicit authority 
to issue injunctive relief, by telling the CRAs to 
remedy unlawful practices and procedures, 
would further CRAs’ mandate under the FCRA 
to assure the maximum possible accuracy and 
completeness of information contained on credit 
reports. 
(D) Absent explicit authority to issue in-
junctions, history suggests that the nationwide 
CRAs are likely to continue conducting business 
as usual in treating any monetary settlements 
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with individual consumers and fines imposed by 
State attorneys general and Federal regulators, 
simply as the ‘‘cost of doing business’’. 
(4) CREDIT SCORES.— 
(A) While nationwide CRAs are required 
by law to supply consumers with a free copy of 
their credit report annually, they can charge 
consumers to obtain a credit score disclosure. 
(B) Many consumers do not realize that 
they have more than just ‘‘one’’ credit score. 
Because the submission of credit information to 
CRAs is voluntary and not all furnishers submit 
information to every CRA, the information con-
tained in a report also varies among CRAs. As 
a result, the credit score generated by each 
CRA is also likely to vary, resulting in poten-
tially different credit decisions based on an 
evaluation of different credit reports obtained 
from different CRAs. 
(C) A February 2015 Consumer Bureau 
report titled ‘‘Consumer Voices on Credit Re-
ports and Scores’’ found that consumers had 
questions about what actions to take to improve 
their scores once they had seen them, sug-
gesting that additional disclosures and edu-
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cational content would be helpful to consumers. 
The Consumer Bureau found that consumers 
were confused by conflicting advice on how to 
improve their scores. 
(D) That report also noted that consumers 
found the process for obtaining consumer re-
ports and credit scores confusing. Consumers 
also were uncertain about whether, and under 
what circumstances, they could obtain a con-
sumer report for free. 
(5) PRIVATE EDUCATION LOANS.— 
(A) The Consumer Bureau’s October 2014 
report titled ‘‘Annual Report of the CFPB Stu-
dent Loan Ombudsman’’ noted many private 
education loan borrowers, who sought to nego-
tiate a modified repayment plan when they were 
experiencing a period of financial distress, were 
unable to get assistance from their loan holders, 
which often resulting in them defaulting on 
their loans. This pattern resembles the dif-
ficulty that a significant number of mortgage 
loan borrowers experienced when they sought to 
take responsible steps to work with their mort-
gage loan servicer to avoid foreclosure during 
the Great Recession. 
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(B) Although private student loan holders 
may allow a borrower to postpone payments 
while enrolled in school full-time, many limit 
this option to a certain time period, usually 48 
to 66 months. This limited time period may not 
be sufficient for those who need additional time 
to obtain their degree or who want to continue 
their education by pursing a graduate or profes-
sional degree. The Consumer Bureau found 
that borrowers who were unable to make pay-
ments often defaulted or had their accounts 
sent to collections before they were even able to 
graduate. 
(6) DECEPTIVE PRACTICES AT CERTAIN PRO-
PRIETARY EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS AND CAREER 
EDUCATION PROGRAMS.— 
(A) NCLC cited the proliferation of law 
enforcement actions against many for-profit 
schools in its June 2014 report, titled ‘‘Ensur-
ing Educational Integrity: 10 Steps to Improve 
State Oversight of For-profit Schools’’, to dem-
onstrate the pervasive problem in this sector of 
targeting low-income students with deceptive 
high-pressure sales techniques involving inflated 
job placement rates and misleading data on 
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graduate wages, and false representations about 
the transferability of credits and the employ-
ability of graduates in occupations that require 
licensure. Student loan borrowers at these 
schools may be left with nothing but worthless 
credentials and large debt. Those who default 
on their student loans face years with damaged 
credit that will adversely impact their ability to 
rent or buy homes, purchase cars, and find em-
ployment. 
(B) The closure and bankruptcy of Corin-
thian Colleges, which was found to have de-
ceived students by steering them into high-in-
terest student loans based on misleading grad-
uation rates and employment data, is a good 
example of the problem. Even after its closure, 
many Corinthian students remained saddled 
with student loan debt, worthless degrees, and 
few prospects for employment. 
(C) Attending a 2-year, for-profit college 
costs, on average, four times as much as at-
tending a community college. Students at for- 
profit colleges represent only about 11 percent 
of the total higher education population but a 
startling 44 percent of all Federal student loan 
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defaults, according to the United States De-
partment of Education (‘‘DOE’’). 
(D) According to NCLC, a dispropor-
tionate number of for-profit students are low-in-
come and people of color. These schools target 
veterans, working parents, first-generation stu-
dents, and non-English speaking students, who 
may be more likely than their public or private 
nonprofit school counterparts to drop out, incur 
enormous student debt, and default on this 
debt. In the 2011–2012 school year, 28 percent 
of African Americans and 15 percent of Latinos 
attending 4-year institutions were enrolled in a 
for-profit school, compared to 10 percent of 
Whites. 
(E) As highlighted in a press release titled 
‘‘Obama Administration Announces Final Rules 
to Protect Students from Poor-Performing Ca-
reer College Programs’’, that was issued by the 
DOE on October 30, 2014, ‘‘[t]oo often, stu-
dents at career colleges—including thousands of 
veterans—are charged excessive costs, but don’t 
get the education they paid for. Instead, stu-
dents in such programs are provided with poor 
quality training, often for low-wage jobs or in 
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occupations where there are simply no job op-
portunities. They find themselves with large 
amounts of debt and, too often, end up in de-
fault. In many cases, students are drawn into 
these programs with confusing or misleading in-
formation.’’. 
(7) MEDICAL DEBT.— 
(A) Research by the Consumer Bureau has 
found that the inclusion of medical collections 
on consumer reports has unfairly reduced con-
sumers’ credit scores. 
(B) The Consumer Bureau’s review of 5 
million anonymized credit files from September 
2011 to September 2013, for example, found 
that credit scores may underestimate a person’s 
creditworthiness by up to 10 points for those 
who owe medical debt, and may underestimate 
a person’s creditworthiness by up to 22 points 
after the medical debt has been paid. For con-
sumers with lower credit scores, especially those 
on the brink of what is considered subprime, a 
10 to 22 point decrease in their credit scores 
can have a significant impact on their lives, in-
cluding by affecting whether they are able to 
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qualify for credit and, if so, the terms and con-
ditions under which it is extended to them. 
(C) The Consumer Bureau found that half 
of all collections trade lines that appear on con-
sumer reports are related to medical bills 
claimed to be owed to hospitals and other med-
ical providers. These trade lines affect the re-
ports of nearly one-fifth of all consumers in the 
credit reporting system. 
(D) The Consumer Bureau has found that 
there are no objective or enforceable standards 
that determine when a debt can or should be 
reported as a collection trade line. Because debt 
buyers and collectors determine whether, when, 
and for how long to report a collection account, 
there is only a limited relationship between the 
time period reported, the severity of a delin-
quency, and when or whether a collection trade 
line appears on a consumer’s credit report. 
(E) Medical bills can be complex and con-
fusing for many consumers, which results in 
consumers’ uncertainty about what they owe, to 
whom, when, or for what, that may cause some 
people, who ordinarily pay their bills on time, to 
delay or withhold payments on their medical 
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debts. This uncertainty can also result in med-
ical collections appearing on consumer reports. 
In a December 2014 report titled ‘‘Consumer 
Credit Reports: A Study of Medical and Non- 
Medical Collections’’, the Consumer Bureau 
found that a large portion of consumers with 
medical collections show no other evidence of fi-
nancial distress and are consumers who ordi-
narily pay their other financial obligations on 
time. Unlike with most credit products or serv-
ices, such as credit cards, installment loans, 
utilities, or wireless or cable services that have 
contractual account disclosures describing the 
terms and conditions of use, most consumers 
are not told what their out-of-pocket medical 
costs will be in advance. Consumers needing ur-
gent or emergency care rarely know, or are pro-
vided, the cost of a medical treatment or proce-
dure before the service is rendered. 
(F) The Consumer Bureau concluded that 
the presence of medical collections is less pre-
dictive of future defaults or serious delin-
quencies than the presence of a nonmedical col-
lection in a study titled ‘‘Data Point: Medical 
Debt and Credit Scores’’, issued in May 2014. 
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(G) FICO’s latest credit scoring model, 
‘‘FICO 9’’, changes the treatment of paid col-
lections to disregard any collection matters that 
the consumer has paid in full. FICO 9, how-
ever, is not yet widely used by lenders. 
(H) VantageScore’s latest credit scoring 
model, ‘‘VantageScore 4.0’’, will be available in 
the fall of 2017. This model will penalize med-
ical collections less than non-medical ones. 
(I) The three nationwide CRAs entered 
into a settlement agreement with the New York 
State attorney general in 2015 to address defi-
ciencies in their dispute resolution process and 
enhance the accuracy of items on reports. These 
policy changes will be implemented in a three- 
phased rollout, culminating by June 2018. Sub-
sequently, these CRAs entered into a coopera-
tive agreement with 31 State Attorneys Gen-
eral, which was the basis of the creation of the 
National Consumer Assistance Plan (‘‘NCAP’’) 
to change some of their business practices. 
(J) While the CRAs appear to be volun-
tarily adopting policy changes on a nationwide 
basis, they are not obligated to do so for con-
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sumers who reside in States that are not party 
to any of the consent orders. 
(K) As a result of the settlement agree-
ments, the three nationwide CRAs will set a 
180-day waiting period before including medical 
collections on a report and will remove a med-
ical collection from a report once it is paid by 
an insurance company. While this change will 
benefit many, once a medical collection appears 
on a report, it will only be deleted or suppressed 
if it is found to have been the insurance com-
pany’s obligation to pay and the insurer pays it. 
Given the research showing there is little pre-
dictive value in medical debt information, med-
ical collections that are paid or settled should 
quickly be removed from a report, regardless of 
who pays or settles this debt. 
(8) FINANCIAL ABUSE BY KNOWN PERSONS.— 
(A) Financial abuse and exploitation are 
frequently associated with domestic violence. 
This type of abuse may result in fraudulent 
charges to a credit card or having fraudulent 
accounts created by the abuser in the survivor’s 
name that could affect ratings by CRAs. Finan-
cial abuse may also result in the survivor’s in-
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ability to make timely payments on their valid 
obligations due to loss or changes in income 
that can occur when their abuser steals from or 
coerces the survivor to relinquish their pay-
checks or savings that could affect ratings by 
CRAs. 
(B) By racking up substantial debts in the 
survivor’s name, abusers are able to exercise fi-
nancial control over their survivors to make it 
economically difficult for the survivor, whose 
credit is often destroyed, to escape the situa-
tion. 
(C) Domestic abuse survivors with poor 
credit are likely to face significant obstacles in 
establishing financial independence from their 
abusers. This can be due, in part, because con-
sumer reports may be used when a person at-
tempts to obtain a checking account, housing, 
insurance, utilities, employment, and even a se-
curity clearance as required for certain jobs. 
(D) Providing documentation of identity 
(‘‘ID’’) theft in order to dispute information on 
one’s consumer report can be particularly chal-
lenging for those who know their financial 
abuser. 
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(E) While it is easier for consumers who 
obtain a police report to remove fraudulent in-
formation from their consumer report and pre-
vent it from reappearing in the future, accord-
ing to the Empire Justice Center, safety and 
other noncredit concerns may impact the capac-
ity of a survivor of financial abuse committed 
by a known person to turn to law enforcement 
to get a police report. 
(F) According to the Legal Aid Society in 
New York, domestic abuse survivors, seeking to 
remove adverse information stemming from fi-
nancial abuse by contacting their furnishers di-
rectly, are likely to face skepticism about claims 
of ID theft perpetrated by a partner because of 
an assumption that they are aware of, and may 
have been complicit in, the activity which the 
survivor alleges stems from financial abuse. 
(9) DECEPTIVE AND MISLEADING MARKETING 
PRACTICES.— 
(A) The Consumer Bureau’s February 
2015 report titled ‘‘Consumer Voices on Credit 
Reports and Scores’’ found that some con-
sumers did not obtain a copy of their consumer 
report due to concerns about security or of 
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being trapped into purchasing unwanted prod-
ucts like an additional report or a credit moni-
toring service. 
(B) In January 2017, the Consumer Bu-
reau fined TransUnion and Equifax for decep-
tively marketing credit scores for purchase by 
consumers as the same credit scores typically 
used by lenders to determine creditworthiness 
and for luring consumers into costly subscrip-
tion services that were advertised as ‘‘free’’ or 
‘‘$1’’ that automatically charged recurring fees 
unless cancelled by consumers. The Consumer 
Bureau also found that Equifax was illegally 
advertising its products on webpages that con-
sumers 
accessed 
through 
AnnualCreditReport.com before consumers ob-
tained their free disclosures. Because of these 
troubling practices, TransUnion was ordered to 
pay $13.9 million in restitution to harmed con-
sumers and a civil penalty of $3 million to the 
Consumer Bureau. Equifax was ordered to pay 
more than $3.7 million to affected consumers 
as well as a civil money penalty of $2.5 million 
to the Consumer Bureau. As part of the con-
sent orders, the CRAs are also supposed to 
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‘‘(3) TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP.—If a person 
providing information to a consumer reporting agen-
cy is acquired by another person, or if another per-
son acquires the right to repayment connected to 
such information, the acquiring person shall be sub-
ject to the requirements of this subsection with re-
spect to such information to the same extent as the 
person who initially provided such information to the 
consumer reporting agency. The person selling or 
transferring the right to repayment shall provide the 
information described in paragraph (1) to the trans-
feree or the acquirer.’’. 
SEC. 104. DUTIES OF FURNISHERS RELATING TO DISPUTE 
PROCEDURES, NOTICES, AND DISCLOSURES. 
(a) DUTY TO PROVIDE ACCURATE AND COMPLETE 
INFORMATION.—Section 623(a) of the Fair Credit Re-
porting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681s–2(a)) is amended— 
(1) in the subsection heading, by inserting 
‘‘AND COMPLETE’’ after ‘‘ACCURATE’’; 
(2) in paragraph (1)— 
(A) by inserting ‘‘or incomplete’’ after ‘‘in-
accurate’’ each place that term appears; and 
(B) in subparagraph (D), by inserting ‘‘or 
completeness’’ after ‘‘accuracy’’; and 
(3) in paragraph (8)— 
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