Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has said credit reporting firm Equifax and its leaders should be held accountable for selling erroneous credit scores to lenders, and should be prevented from selling reports until it proves problems were fixed and controls are in place.
“I urge you to use the full extent of your authority to hold Equifax and its leadership accountable,” Waters, chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Tuesday (Aug. 9).
Equifax provided erroneous credit scores for millions of Americans seeking loans over a three-week period in the spring, PYMNTS reported earlier this month.
See also: Report: Equifax Glitch Sent Millions of Wrong Credit Scores to Lenders, Impacted Loan Rates
The credit bureau sent the scores in response to people applying for car loans, credit cards and mortgages and included lenders like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial.
In the letter, Waters pointed to reports of Equifax executives not taking the incident seriously and being quoted as having said that just a “small number” of people were affected by the erroneous credit decision. The CEO reportedly said, “The impact is going to be quite small, not something that’s meaningful to Equifax,” according to the letter.
Waters said Equifax’s initial reactions regarding the issues have made her “deeply concerned that not all harmed consumers will be promptly identified, notified, or made whole.”
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She also pointed to the credit reporting agency’s repeated issues, including a 2017 hack that exposed the personal information of nearly 150 million people in the U.S.
The CFPB, along with the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, entered into a maximum $700 million settlement agreement with Equifax on July 22, 2019, per the letter.
