In April 2020, the Policy & Economic Research Council (PERC) issued a blog posting, COVID-19 and Credit Reporting: Suppression is Not the Solution. This posting sets forth a short but important point, data suppression in the wake of COVID-19 is more harmful for consumers and credit economies than not reporting accurately with consumers in accommodation programs. In July 2020, the Policy & Economic Research Council (PERC) followed up it’s April 2020 blog post with report finding that “that data suppression/deletion measures put forward in some proposed legislation addressing the economic fallout of COVID-19 was more likely to harm borrowers than to help them. The report, titled Addition is Better than Subtraction: The Risks from Data Suppression and Benefits of Adding More Positive Data in Credit Reporting reviewed previous research that looked at data deletion and found that lower-income and minority borrowers would be most harmed. The report also recommended adding positive (on-time) payment data of telecoms, cable and satellite TV, and broadband companies into the credit reporting system, rather than deleting negative (late) payment data.”
Eric J. Ellman is Senior Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs at the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) in Washington, DC. He also served for eight months as Interim President and CEO of the Association. More