The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sued Experian Information Solutions, Inc., for Experian’s failures to conduct investigations of disputed information in consumer credit files properly. Below is the CFPB’s notice of this FCRA enforcement action and a link to the CFPB’s Complaint against Experian.

On January 7, 2025, the Bureau filed a lawsuit against Experian Information Solutions, Inc., one of the largest consumer reporting agencies in the country. Experian collects and organizes data on most adult Americans to generate consumer credit reports, which it sells to creditors and other businesses who are evaluating whether to offer consumers products, services, or opportunities such as credit lines, loans, jobs, and housing. To promote the accuracy and fairness of information in consumer credit reports, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives consumers the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information in their credit file and requires consumer reporting agencies like Experian to forward such disputes to the company that originally provided the information (called the “furnisher”) for investigation. FCRA also requires consumer reporting agencies to reinvestigate such disputes and remove or correct any inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information. The Bureau alleges that Experian violated FCRA by failing to properly conduct reinvestigations of disputed information in consumer credit files; failing to delete inaccurate, incomplete, or unverified information in consumer credit files; failing to provide adequate written notice to consumers of the results of its reinvestigations; failing to prevent the improper reinsertion of previously deleted information from consumer credit files; and failing to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the credit information Experian reports on consumers. In addition, the complaint alleges that Experian committed unfair acts or practices in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 by (1) failing to convey consumers’ disputes to furnishers fully and accurately, and instead distorting, truncating, and mischaracterizing consumers’ disputes; (2) relying excessively on furnishers to resolve disputes, routinely doing nothing more than sending the dispute to a furnisher and implementing the furnisher’s response, despite having evidence of that furnisher’s unreliability; and (3) improperly reinserting tradelines into consumer credit reports due to its practice of failing to adequately match newly reported tradelines to tradelines that were previously deleted as a result of a dispute if the subsequent furnishing was from a new furnisher. The Bureau seeks, among other things, to bring Experian into compliance with the law, consumer redress, and the imposition of civil money penalties.

CFPB Complaint Against Experian