Cordray Proposes On-Site Monitoring for Big 3 Credit Bureaus

On the heels of news that Equifax, a credit bureau, had sensitive information for more than 143 million Americans stolen in a massive security breach, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Richard Cordray, announced the big 3 credit reporting agencies, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian, would be subject to embedded regulatory monitoring. The development of the monitoring process will be a joint effort between the CFPB, the Federal Trade Commission, and the New York Department of Financial Services. Two hearings in Congress have also been scheduled to, as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden (R- OR) put it, “learn what went wrong and what we need to do to better protect consumers from serious breaches like this in the future.” The state of New York has also issued subpoenas to Equifax for internal documents related to the hack. There is no word yet on whether federal regulators will extend onsite monitoring to non-prime credit reporting agencies.