As we reminded you last month here, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"), the agency that has enforcement responsibility over the Fair Credit Report Act ("Act"), revised the forms which employers must use to comply with the FCRA, effective January 1, 2013. There was only one little problem with the forms the CFPB provided for use: They contained various typos and technical errors that the CFPB now has recognized in its Supplementary Information in the November 14, Federal Register Notice.
The forms at issue:
- The Summary of Consumer Identity Theft Rights;
- Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which employers are required to provide to applicants and employees with the FCRA disclosure and authorization form when the employer procures an investigative consumer report and with any pre-adverse action notice sent when an employer intends to rely in whole or in part on information contained in a background check report to make an employment decision;
- Notice of Furnisher Responsibilities, which background check providers must provide to certain furnishers of information; and
- Notice to Users of Consumer Reports: Obligations of Users Under the FCRA, which background check providers must give employers who procure background check reports.
These forms appear, respectively, in Appendices I, K, M and N of Regulation V, and the new corrected forms are available here.
The good news for those employers who have already transitioned to the forms that were published in December 2011, the CFPB says it will regard the use of the originally-published model forms, typos and technical errors notwithstanding, “to constitute compliance with the FCRA provisions requiring such forms and will regard those forms to be substantially similar to the corrected forms” until it directs otherwise. The CFPB further states that it plans to so advise, and to provide sufficient time to allow for orderly discontinuation of the December forms, when it issues a final rule to restate Regulation V in 2013.
Takeaways. For employers that have not yet started using the new FCRA forms, make sure you use the newly-corrected ones available above. For employers that already transitioned to the originally-published model forms, consider transitioning to the correct model forms as it is unclear how must advance notice the CFPB will give before ending its grace period.