Defining Larger Participants of the Consumer Reporting Market

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU <CFR>12 CFR Part 1090</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. CFPB-2025-0031]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3170-AB52</RIN> <SUBJECT>Defining Larger Participants of the Consumer Reporting Market</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Advance notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) is seeking information to assist it in considering whether to propose a rule to amend the test to define larger participants in the consumer reporting market established by the Bureau's Defining Larger Participants of the Consumer Reporting Market Final Rule published on July 20, 2012 (Consumer Reporting Larger Participant Rule). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before September 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit responsive information and other comments, identified by Docket No. CFPB-2025-0031, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email: 2025-ANPR-CreditReporting@cfpb.gov</E> . Include Docket No. CFPB-2025-0031 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> Comment Intake—Defining Larger Participants of the Consumer Reporting Market 2025, c/o Legal Division Docket Manager, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 1700 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20552. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> The CFPB encourages the early submission of comments. All submissions should include the agency name and docket number. Additionally, where the Bureau has asked for specific comment on a topic, commenters should seek to highlight the topic to which their comment is applicable. Because paper mail is subject to delay, commenters are encouraged to submit comments electronically. In general, all comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . All submissions, including attachments and other supporting materials, will become part of the public record and subject to public disclosure. Proprietary information or sensitive personal information, such as account numbers or Social Security numbers, or names of other individuals, should not be included. Submissions will not be edited to remove any identifying or contact information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dave Gettler, Paralegal Specialist, Office of Regulations, at 202-435-7700. If you require this document in an alternative electronic format, please contact <E T="03">CFPB_Accessibility@cfpb.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Bureau is seeking information in order to consider whether to propose a rule to amend the test to define larger participants in the consumer reporting market. Currently, a nonbank covered person is a larger participant of the consumer reporting market if the nonbank covered person has more than $7 million in annual receipts resulting from relevant consumer reporting activities. The Bureau is concerned that the benefits of the current threshold may not justify the compliance burdens for many of the entities that are currently considered larger participants in this market, and that the current threshold may be diverting limited Bureau resources to determine whom among the universe of providers may be subject to the Bureau's supervisory authority and whether these providers should be examined in a particular year. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Section 1024 of the CFPA, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> codified at 12 U.S.C. 5514, gives the Bureau supervisory authority over all nonbank covered persons  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> offering or providing three enumerated types of consumer financial products or services: (1) origination, brokerage, or servicing of consumer loans secured by real estate and related mortgage loan modification or foreclosure relief services; (2) private education loans; and (3) payday loans. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The Bureau also has supervisory authority over “larger participant[s] of a market for other consumer financial products or services, as defined by rule[s]” the CFPB issues. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> To date, the Bureau has issued six rules defining larger participants of markets for consumer financial products and services for purposes of CFPA section 1024(a)(1)(B). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Public Law 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376, 1955 (2010) (hereinafter CFPA). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The provisions of 12 U.S.C. 5514 apply to certain categories of covered persons, described in section (a)(1), and expressly exclude from coverage persons described in 12 U.S.C. 5515(a) (very large insured depository institutions and credit unions and their affiliates) and 12 U.S.C. 5516(a) (other insured depository institutions and credit unions). The term “covered person” means “(A) any person that engages in offering or providing a consumer financial product or service; and (B) any affiliate of a person described [in (A)] if such affiliate acts as a service provider to such person.” 12 U.S.C. 5481(6). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  12 U.S.C. 5514(a)(1)(A), (D), (E). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  12 U.S.C. 5514(a)(1)(B), (a)(2); <E T="03">see also</E> 12 U.S.C. 5481(5) (defining “consumer financial product or service”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  These six rules defined larger participants of markets for consumer reporting, 77 FR 42874 (July 20, 2012) (Consumer Reporting Rule); consumer debt collection, 77 FR 65775 (Oct. 31, 2012) (Consumer Debt Collection Rule); student loan servicing, 78 FR 73383 (Dec. 6, 2013) (Student Loan Servicing Rule); international money transfers, 79 FR 56631 (Sept. 23, 2014) (International Money Transfer Rule); automobile financing, 80 FR 37496 (June 30, 2015) (Automobile Financing Rule); and general-use digital consumer payment applications, 89 FR 99582 (Dec. 10, 2024) (General-Use Digital Payment Applications Rule). The Bureau is issuing advance notices of proposed rulemakings to reconsider the test for defining larger participants in the consumer reporting, consumer debt collection, international money transfer, and automobile financing markets. The Bureau will continue to assess whether it is appropriate to reconsider the test for the student loan servicing market. The General-Use Digital Payment Applications Rule was made ineffective by a joint resolution of disapproval by Congress under the Congressional Review Act. S.J.Res.28—119th Congress (2025-2026), Public Law 119-11; <E T="03">see also</E> 5 U.S.C. 801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> The Bureau published the Consumer Reporting Larger Participant Rule on July 20, 2012. <SU>6</SU> The final rule defined a consumer reporting market that covers consumer reporting agencies selling comprehensive consumer reports, consumer report resellers, and specialty consumer reporting agencies. It established that nonbank covered persons with more than $7 million in annual receipts resulting from relevant consumer reporting activities would be considered larger participants in this market. <SU>7</SU> The consumer reporting market includes consumer reporting agencies selling consumer reports, consumer report resellers, analyzers of consumer reports and other account information (analyzers), and specialty consumer reporting agencies (collectively referred to as consumer reporting entities). As a general matter, some consumer reporting agencies collect, among other information, information about credit accounts, items sent for collection, and public records such as judgments and bankruptcies. Resellers purchase consumer information from one or more of the agencies that collect information, typically provide further input to the consumer report (including by merging files from multiple agencies or adding information from other data sources), and then resell the report to lenders and other users. Analyzers apply statistical and other methods to consumer reports and other account information to facilitate the interpretation of such information and its use in decisions regarding other products and services. Certain analyzers develop and sell credit scoring services and products. Specialty consumer reporting agencies primarily collect and provide specific types of information that may be used to make decisions regarding particular consumer financial products or services, such as payday loans or checking accounts, or for other determinations, such as eligibility for employment or rental housing. However, some of these specialty consumer reporting agencies, depending on their activities, may not be engaged in offering or providing consumer financial products or services within the meaning of the CFPA, and therefore would not, on the basis of their activities, become “covered persons” subject to the Bureau's supervisory authority. <SU>8</SU> The Bureau implemented these exclusions in the definition of “consumer reporting” in the final rule. The final rule established a test, based on “annual receipts,” to assess whether a nonbank covered person that offers or provides consumer reporting is a larger participant of the consumer reporting market. The definition of “annual receipts” was adapted from the definition of the term used by the Small Business Administration (SBA) for purposes of defining small business concerns. The final rule adopted the proposed test for qualifying as a larger participant of the consumer reporting market: more than $7 million in annual receipts resulting from relevant consumer reporting activities. Cov ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━