WASHINGTON–The new Democratic majority in the House will be bringing renewed attention on the credit reporting industry and data security, including on Equifax, which was hit with a massive breach in 2017.
House Democrats have put legislation responding to the Equifax hack at the top of their agenda for this year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“A handful of existing proposals, some bipartisan, offer a road map for possible changes to how the industry handles consumer information, including subjecting credit-reporting companies to tougher cybersecurity standards and making it easier for consumers to fix errors on their credit reports,” the Journal reported.
“The Equifax data breach response is far from over,” Jaret Seiberg, an analyst for Cowen Washington Research Group told the Journal. “There will be more legislation in the next two years that impacts Equifax and the other credit bureaus.”
As CUToday.info reported earlier, lawmakers from both parties were outspoken in their criticism of Equifax following the data breach, which involved personal and financial information on nearly 148-million people. And while that led to several bills in Congress that would have required greater oversight of the bureaus, most of that legislation stalled in Congress.
Waters’ Agenda
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the new head of the House Financial Services Committee, said she wants to revive the credit reporting debate and said her Committee will focus on the industry and will use as a template a bill she introduced to overhaul the industry.
Some of the proposals in that legislation would:
- Enhance consumers’ ability to fix credit-reporting errors by making it easier to dispute the accuracy of information contained in reports
- Require companies to present documents used as a basis for disputed information
- Prohibit employers from using credit reports
Both credit union trade groups have pressed Congress to pass more stringent data security requirements for the credit bureaus as well as other providers, as well.