Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Madam President, I am pleased to introduce the homebuyers Privacy Protection Act with the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Hagerty. This bipartisan legislation restricts the use of so-called mortgage ``trigger leads'' and gives prospective home buyers control over their personal credit information.

Trigger leads are essentially tips based on information the major credit reporting bureaus sell to mortgage brokers and lenders when the bureaus learn that a consumer has applied for a mortgage with another lender. Each trigger lead they sell can generate dozens of calls and solicitations to the consumer from lenders, ostensibly to provide the consumer with better offers. In fact, one home buyer reported to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that they received over 100 calls from other lenders within 2 days of applying for a mortgage. Prospective home buyers who are bombarded by these kind of solicitations typically have no idea their information was sold without their affirmative consent.

Buying a home is often the most consequential financial decision a family will make. Getting ``spammed'' with additional offers, after a family has already shopped for a mortgage and chosen a lender, makes this already stressful process even more stressful. It can be very difficult, if not impossible, for a family to sift through dozens of offers over a few days and actually receive better credit. Consumers who are subjected to a deluge of solicitations as the result of a trigger lead are justified in feeling that their privacy has been invaded.

Many reputable mortgage companies see it the same way. They support curtailing trigger leads since prospective home buyers often blame their lender for selling off their personal information even though it is the credit bureaus that are providing this information.

Unrelenting, aggressive solicitations are more than just a nuisance. Indeed, some companies that buy trigger leads may not use them responsibly and may have poor track records of compliance. In 2018, the Washington Post reported that some mortgage lenders had used trigger leads to misrepresent themselves in calls by suggesting that they are underwriters for the consumer's current lender or by implying that they are calling from a government agency. According to reporting in the Chicago Tribune, unsuspecting home buyers are at risk of inadvertently handing over sensitive personal information, exposing themselves to identity theft.

The current system leaves consumers without control of their personal information when they apply for a mortgage. Our bill will fix the current system by significantly restricting the circumstances in which the credit bureaus can sell home buyers' personal information to generate trigger leads. The credit bureaus would be permitted to sell this information only in the limited circumstances when the consumer already has a significant financial relationship with the lending institution seeking the information or when the prospective home buyer has provided affirmative consent to share this information broadly with other lenders.

The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act will go a long way towards securing consumers' personal information and will provide much needed relief from the seemingly never-ending solicitations prospective home buyers receive during an already stressful time.

I thank the broad coalition of consumer advocacy groups and trade associations for their support, including the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Consumer Law Center on behalf of its low- income clients, the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, the Community Home Lenders of America, U.S. PIRG, the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts, the Broker Action Coalition, the American Bankers Association, and the Independent Community Bankers of America.

I urge my colleagues to join Senator Hagerty and me in supporting this commonsense, bipartisan bill.

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