To: All Member Banks and Others Concerned in the Third Federal Reserve District
Attention: Chief Executive Officer and Chief Compliance Officer
Subject: PROPER DISPOSAL OF CONSUMER INFORMATION UNDER THE FAIR AND ACCURATE CREDIT TRANSACTIONS ACT OF 2003; FINAL RULE
Summary:
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the other federal bank and thrift regulatory agencies have jointly announced interagency final rules to require financial institutions to adopt measures for properly disposing of consumer information derived from credit reports.
Current law requires financial institutions to protect customer information by implementing information security programs. The final rules require institutions to make modest adjustments to their information security programs to include measures for the proper disposal of consumer information. They also add a new definition of "consumer information.”
The agencies’ final rules implement section 216 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT Act) and include this new statutory requirement in the Interagency Guidelines Establishing Standards for Safeguarding Customer Information (retitled the Interagency Guidelines Establishing Standards for Information Security), which were adopted in 2001.
The Federal Register notice, published December 28, 2004, is available here (92 KB, 40 pages).
Date: The final rules will take effect on July 1, 2005.
For Further Information: John C. Wood or Kathleen C. Ryan, Counsels, or Dan S. Sokolov, Senior Attorney, Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, at (202) 452-3667; for users of Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) only, contact (202) 263-4869.