The maximum charge of $12.50 that consumer reporting agencies may charge consumers for their credit reports will remain unchanged for 2020, the federal consumer financial protection agency said Wednesday.
The ceiling on allowable charges under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), as announced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), was set at $12.50 last year, an increase from the previous year. The bureau also noted that it has now codified the yearly adjustment notices and added a provision to Regulation V regarding the maximum allowable charge.
In 2018, CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger signed a rule change that codified such fee adjustments in bureau regulation for the first time. The rule change added a section to Reg V to establish the maximum allowable charge for disclosures by a consumer reporting agency to a consumer pursuant to FCRA section 609. It also added an appendix setting forth the statutory requirements for determining the maximum allowable charge and preserving a list of historical maximum allowable charges.
The FCRA provides that a consumer reporting agency may charge a consumer a reasonable amount for making a disclosure to the consumer pursuant to section 609 of the FCRA. The original cap for such charges was $8, but the law provides the cap will be raised Jan. 1 of each year based proportionally on changes in the Consumer Price Index, with fractional changes rounded to the nearest fifty cents. The Bureau’s calculations are based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).