In the July 15, 2011 Federal Register, the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) published a final rule amending the model notices in the Equal Credit Opportunity Act’s (ECOA) Regulation B (12 CFR Part 202) to implement the new credit score disclosure requirements of section 1100F of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) for adverse action notices under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Although the effective date of the FRB’s final rule is August 15, 2011, due to the July 21, 2011 effective date of Section 1100F of the Dodd-Frank Act, creditors must comply with this requirement for FCRA adverse action notices on and after July 21, 2011. The ECOA requires a creditor to notify a credit applicant when it has taken adverse action against the applicant. The ECOA adverse action requirements are implemented in the FRB’s Regulation B, as cited above. The FCRA also requires a person to provide a notice when the person takes an adverse action against a consumer based in whole or in part on information in a consumer report. There are no implementing regulations for the adverse action requirements of the FCRA. Thus, certain existing model notices in Regulation B include the content required by both the ECOA and the FCRA adverse action provisions, so that creditors can use the model notices to comply with the adverse action requirements of both. The FRB’s final rule amends these combined ECOA-FCRA adverse action model notices in Regulation B to include the disclosure of credit scores and related information if a credit score is used in taking adverse action, in order to reflect this new requirement of the FCRA as amended by Section 1100F of the Dodd-Frank Act to require creditors to disclose on FCRA adverse action notices a credit score used in taking any adverse action and information relating to that score. Section 1100F of the Dodd-Frank Act amends the FCRA to require that creditors disclose the following information on FCRA adverse action notices: (1) a numerical credit score used in making the credit decision; (2) the range of possible scores under the model used; (3) up to four key factors that adversely affected the consumer’s credit score (or up to five factors if the number of inquiries made with respect to that consumer report is a key factor); (4) the date on which the credit score was created; and (5) the name of the person or entity that provided the credit score.
