Did you know that your credit report is used for more than just applying for a credit card, home loan or car loan? That’s right, your credit report is routinely checked by automobile insurance companies when you apply for a policy or renew an existing one.
Apparently insurance companies believe that people who don’t pay their bills on time either get into more accidents or just don’t pay their insurance premiums. Whatever the reason, it’s a nearly universal practice.
As anyone who has ever gotten turned down for a credit card knows, when you receive that declination letter (it’s called a “notice of adverse action,” because it sometimes isn’t a declination but rather a letter telling you that they couldn’t offer you a loan at 4% but could offer you one at 24%) in the mail you are informed of the name and phone number of the credit reporting agency that produced a report for the potential credit grantor to review. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you are able to request a free copy of your credit report from that agency as a way of seeing what exactly the grantor saw. The thinking is that this will give you the opportunity to correct any errors, contact the creditor to iron out the details, and possibly get a better decision.
Well, it seems as if the insurance companies haven’t been sending out those letters to people. So the Delaware Insurance Commissioner has enlisted the help of 12 other states to file briefs with the Supreme Court in the cases of Safeco v. Burr and GEICO v. Edo.
Consumers in the cases claim that insurance companies Safeco and GEICO violated the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. The consumers said that when a consumer’s credit information resulted in the consumer receiving a higher rate, insurers should have sent out “adverse action notices” required under FCRA and acted in “willful” disregard of the FCRA in not doing so.
Check out this story in the Insurance Journal for more on the cases. The National Consumer Law Center also filed a brief in the case, which you can read here; the brief is very technical, but interesting if you like reading legal arguments.
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