Skip to main content
Menu Icon
Close

InfoBytes Blog

Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

CFPB reexamines the effect of NCAP on credit scores and credit performance

Federal Issues CFPB Consumer Finance Credit Scores Credit Reporting Agency

Federal Issues

On December 10, the CFPB released the latest quarterly consumer credit trends report, which evaluated the extent to which removal of public records from credit reports affects consumer credit scores and credit performance. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the three major U.S. credit reporting agencies began using stricter guidelines when considering consumer public records, such as tax liens and civil judgments, to be included in consumer credit reports as a result of the National Consumer Assistance Plan (NCAP). The NCAP, among other things, imposed restrictions on medical debt reporting and civil public records such as tax liens, civil judgments, and bankruptcies. Observing that the “NCAP public records provision resulted in the removal of all civil judgments and almost half of tax liens from credit reports by the end of July 2017,” this report compared consumer credit scores and credit performance for consumers that had public records removed from their credit report and consumers who did not. According to the report, “there was only a slight increase in credit scores following the NCAP,” and “the NCAP did not seem to have a large effect on the relationship between credit scores and consumers’ credit performance for consumers whose credit report included a lien or judgment compared with consumers whose credit report did not.”