The Fair
Credit Reporting Act provides that potential insurers have a
permissible purpose for accessing your credit report when they are
determining whether to provide insurance coverage.
Though when we look at our Trans Union, Equifax or Experian credit
reports, we rarely, if ever see insurance companies performing
inquiries on the credit reports. Is that because
insurance companies rarely perform credit inquiries? Not at
all.
As we have blogged in the past, the 3 main credit reporting
agencies mentioned above are not the only ones. There are
different types of consumer reporting agencies that fall within the
definition under the Fair Credit
Reporting Act. There are consumer reporting agencies for
background checks and criminal background reports. There are
also reporting agencies for insurance companies. These
reporters provide information about how many claims one has made in
the past or for how much, and allows the insurers to determine how
much to charge as a premium.
These little known companies are C.L.U.E. (owned by
LexisNexis) and A-PLUS (by Verisk Analytics). Very few
people know about these reports and would have no reason to unless
they were denied insurance or quoted an exceptionally high
premium. Just as any other consumer reporting agency,
these insurance reporters have the same responsibilities toward
consumers as the others. That is, you are entitled to one
free report in every 12 month period and they must provide it to
you. In addition, if you find errors in the report, you can
issue a dispute to the agency and they must conduct an
investigation and report back the results within 30
days. Consumers who are harmed by the failure of
these companies to perform a reasonable investigation or report
with maximum possible accuracy can bring claims against these
companies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
For information on how to dispute your credit report
visit our website
or contact us for a free case
review.