FCRA Looks Ready to Go (Despite Late Twist). (cover story)

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee was poised late Thursday to pass legislation to update the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but the debate took an unexpected turn. The amendment, which Representative, Bernard Sanders introduced, would ban card issuers from using any negative information in a customer's credit report to increase the annual percentage rate on the account, unless the customer missed a payment on that account or was more than 60 days past due on other debts. Other approved amendments would make technical changes to the provision allowing free annual copies of reports, require banking regulators to issue guidelines on how to resolve street address discrepancies when reporting to a credit bureau and require companies to encode a customer's medical information to protect their privacy.