Executive Letter: WBA Advocacy in Action — Protecting Mortgage Customers from Unwanted Solicitations
By Rose Oswald Poels
With the 119th Congress well underway, more legislation is getting introduced to help the industry and its customers. While WBA was in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago for the first of two Washington lobby trips, we spoke with our congressional delegation about the need for the “trigger lead” bill to be reintroduced this session. Later that week, the bipartisan Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act was introduced in both the Senate and House (S. 1467 and H.R. 2808) and is currently co-sponsored by Senator Baldwin and Rep. Bryan Steil respectively.
As a reminder, the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to eliminate abusive mortgage “trigger leads” and limit prescreened credit offers to consumers who consent or who have a preexisting relationship with a financial institution. Currently, the only way for a consumer to not receive these prescreened offers is by expressly opting out on each credit bureau’s website.
The Senate bill was introduced and immediately referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The House bill was introduced and immediately referred to the House Financial Services Committee. Today, H.R. 2808 is being noticed as part of a House Financial Institutions Subcommittee hearing.
Since the beginning of last session, WBA has been lobbying for passage of this bipartisan legislation alongside ABA and ICBA. All bankers attending our Washington lobby trips over the last few years share stories about the incredibly high number of phone calls and text messages their mortgage applicants receive within hours of applying for a mortgage loan. These entities that have no relationship with the consumer are buying these trigger leads from the credit bureaus and immediately contacting your customers to lure them away from your bank. These calls have left customers confused and very upset, often believing that the bank has improperly shared their information.
To help banks warn their customers about the problem, WBA created model forms members may use to communicate this activity at the application stage which reiterates that the bank did not sell the customer’s information. You may obtain the forms from the WBA Best Practices Library located on the compliance resources section of the WBA website. The library is password protected. If you need the password, please contact WBA Legal at wbalegal@wisbank.com
WBA will be back in Washington D.C. with bankers in a few weeks in conjunction with ICBA’s Capital Summit where we will lobby on this legislation, among others, to get more Wisconsin co-sponsors added. Last session, several members of our delegation were co-sponsors. In addition, ICBA has a banker “call to action” on the trigger leads bill on its “Be Heard Grassroots Action Center” which can be accessed here: ICBA urges grassroots action on trigger leads. I encourage you to let your member of Congress know this is a critical issue for your bank’s customers!
