Federal Agencies Issue Rules on Identity Theft
The Federal Trade Commission and six federal financial regulatory agencies have sent to the Federal Register for publication final rules on identity theft “red flags” and address discrepancies. Those rules implement sections 114 and 315 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003.
According to the FTC, the rules require each financial institution and creditor that holds any consumer account–or other account for which there is a reasonably foreseeable risk of identity theft– to develop and implement a program for combating identity theft in connection with new and existing accounts.
The agencies also issued guidelines to assist financial institutions and creditors in developing and implementing a program.
The final rules also require credit and debit card issuers to develop policies and procedures to assess the validity of change of address and additional card requests. In addition, the final rules require users of consumer reports to develop policies and procedures to apply when they receive address discrepancy notices from a consumer reporting agency.
The final rulemaking was issued by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the FTC, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. They take effect Jan 1.
