United States of America: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened consultation on definition of larger participants of consumer reporting market

On 8 August 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) opened a consultation on an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on the definition of larger participants in the consumer reporting market, until 22 September 2025. The rule on the definition was established under the CFPB’s Consumer Reporting Larger Participant Rule of 20 July 2012. It seeks views on whether the current threshold of USD 7 million in annual receipts from relevant consumer reporting activities, applied under Section 1024 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 (codified at 12 U.S.C. 5514), should be amended. The CFPB presented data from the 2022 Economic Census and the Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB), highlighting revenue concentration among firms with receipts above USD 100 million compared with smaller entities under the Small Business Administration (SBA) USD 41 million small-business threshold for NAICS code 561450 (Credit Bureaus). The consultation invites comments on whether to adjust the USD 7 million threshold, align it with SBA standards, adopt alternative criteria such as consumer file counts, and assess potential impacts on consumers, small businesses, servicemembers, veterans, and rural communities.