Survey of Information Sharing Practices with Affiliates

OMB No. 3084-NEW
Expires: TBD

Survey of Information Sharing Practices with
Affiliates

Disclosure of Estimated Burden
The estimated average burden associated with this information collection is 10 hours per respondent. Burden estimates include
the time for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining data in the required form, and completing the information
collection, but exclude the time for compiling and maintaining business records in the normal course of a respondent’s activities.
A Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and an organization (or a person) is not required to respond to a collection of
information, unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Comments concerning the accuracy of this burden
estimate and suggestions for reducing this burden should be directed to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office
of Management and Budget, Washington, D.C. 20503, and to Margaret Patterson, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, N.W., Mail Stop NJ-4136, Washington, D.C. 20580.

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Survey of Information Sharing Practices with
Affiliates
Introduction
In Section 214(e) of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act, Pub. L.
108-159, 117 Stat. 1952), 1 Congress required selected federal agencies 2 to conduct regular
studies of the consumer information sharing practices of financial institutions and other persons
that are creditors or users of consumer reports with their affiliates.
Your response, along with those from other entities being surveyed, will be aggregated
and analyzed by the Agencies and will become the basis of an interagency report to the
Congress. The report will not include names of, or otherwise identify, individual respondents.
The interagency report will be available at: [www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress].

Instructions
General. When responding to survey questions, please mark the answers that apply to
you. Your responses should reflect your information sharing practices with affiliates.
In many questions, there is space for you to provide a short explanation or alternative
answer from the ones listed. To the extent possible, the Agencies will incorporate any
supplemental information received from respondents (without attribution) within the report that
the Agencies prepare for Congress. The Agencies encourage you to submit supplemental
descriptive information about the purposes for which you share information with your affiliates.

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In general, the FACT Act amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act to enhance the ability of consumers to combat
identity theft, increase the accuracy of consumer reports and allow consumers to exercise greater control regarding
the type and amount of marketing solicitations they receive. To promote increasingly efficient national credit
markets, the FACT Act also establishes uniform national standards in key areas of regulation regarding consumer
report information. Finally, the FACT Act requires a number of studies to be conducted, including the Section
214(e) study on information sharing practices.

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The federal agencies involved in the study are: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Trade Commission, National Credit Union Administration, Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, and Office of Thrift Supervision (Agencies).

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Throughout this survey, the terms “you” and “we” refer to the entity (e.g., commercial
bank, savings institution, credit union, or other business) that is responding to the survey. Please
respond to the extent possible about your entity’s information sharing with affiliates. Do not
respond about such sharing and receiving activities on a combined basis for you, your affiliates,
and your corporate holding company (if applicable). Examples of sharing include consumer
information that is:
•
•
•
•
•

put in a common database to which your affiliates have access
used jointly by you and your affiliate(s)
used in certain centralized functions within an organization, such as mortgage underwriting
collected from on-line activities and accessible to affiliates
provided to one affiliate which, in turn, provides the same consumer information to another.
The survey seeks information on your current information sharing practices with

affiliates. Therefore, please provide responses for such practices that have taken place during the
past 12 months. If your practices have changed during that time due to a significant event such
as a merger, please provide responses regarding your practices as they exist today.
The shaded boxes found between survey questions provide information regarding the
relevant statutory requirement from Section 214(e) of the FACT Act. The statutory requirements
contained in these boxes form the basis for the survey questions that follow.

Confidentiality. Where possible, the Agencies will aggregate data from respondents for
use in the report to the Congress. The report will not include names of respondents. If a member
of the public requests copies of the survey responses, the Agencies would consider each request
and determine whether the information is exempt from public release under the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA).

Glossary. See Appendix A.

How to respond. Please complete your survey and return it to Margaret Patterson,
Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Mail Stop NJ-4136, Washington,
D.C. 20580. If you would prefer to submit your response electronically, you may send the
completed survey in PDF format to affiliatestudy@ftc.gov.

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When responses are due. Please submit your completed survey by [30 days from date
sent].

Questions. If you have any questions, please contact Margaret Patterson at (202)3263472.

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FACT Act Affiliate-Sharing Survey
Please answer the following questions by checking (9) all that apply.
1. Identify your primary business.
Primary business
Commercial bank
Credit union
Insurer
Retailer
Savings institution
Other (please explain):

2. Identify the types of activities in which your company and your affiliates are engaged.
Credit activities
Agricultural lending
Auto financing
Commercial lending
Consumer leasing
Consumer lending
Credit card issuing
International trade financing
Real estate lending
Sales financing
Secondary market financing
Small business lending
Other credit activities (please explain):
Other activities
Activities related to investments, securities, or other financial vehicles
Insurance activities
Trust activities
Other activities (please explain):

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3. Indicate the asset size of your company.
Size of company
Less than $250 million
$250 million to under $500 million
$500 million to under $1 billion
$1 billion to under $5 billion
$5 billion or more
4. Identify the geographical range of your company’s activities:
Geographic range of market area
Limited to one Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) 3
Covering 2 to 10 MSAs
Regional
Regional with some national activity
National
National and international
5. Estimate the number of consumers whose information your company collects or maintains (for
example, as a proxy, you may use the number of privacy notices that you distribute to
consumers).
Number of consumers
Not known
Less than 5,000
5,000 to under 50,000
50,000 to under 100,000
100,000 to under 500,000
500,000 to under 1,000,000
1,000,000 to under 10,000,000
10,000,000 to under 25,000,000
25,000,000 to under 50,000,000
50,000,000 or more

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A list of MSAs may be found at www ffiec.gov. Click on the link for “Census Reports” that is listed under the
category of “Consumer Compliance.”

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6. Do you share consumer information with your affiliates?
_____Yes

_____No

7. Do you receive consumer information from your affiliates?
_____Yes

_____No

If you answer no to both Question 6 and Question 7, stop here.

8. We share, or receive, consumer information with the following types of affiliates (check all
that apply):
Receive from

Share with

Type of affiliate involved in sharing or receiving consumer
information
Commercial firm (e.g., retailer, automobile, or oil company)
Consumer creditors other than depository institutions
Data aggregators
Holding company
Insurance agencies or companies
Insured depository institutions
Securities brokers or dealers
Service providers
Special purpose entity issuing securities (e.g., credit card trust)
Uninsured depository institution (e.g. trust bank)
Other (please specify):

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(i) – Identify the purposes for which consumer information is shared
with your affiliates.
9. We share with, or receive from, our affiliates consumer information for the following
purposes (check all that apply):

Receive from

Share with

Purposes of sharing or receiving consumer information
Back office services (e.g., processing transactions, billing, mailing of
account statements and other disclosures)
Customer service (e.g., a call center or Web site for a consumer’s use in
accessing all accounts across an organization)
Credit evaluation and underwriting
Data processing (not included elsewhere on the list)
Document storage and retention
Employment and hiring
Fraud prevention and detection
Insurance underwriting
Lower operating costs
Marketing to consumers
Regulatory compliance (e.g. Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering,
HMDA)
Research
Risk management (e.g., credit or operational)
Other (please specify):

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(ii) – Identify the types of consumer information shared with your
affiliates.
10. We share with, or receive from, our affiliates the following types of consumer information
(check all that apply):
Receive from

Share with

Types of consumer information shared with, or received from
affiliates
Application information (e.g., an applicant’s identifying information,
income, assets, or liabilities)
Consumer report information, including credit scores, obtained from
consumer reporting agencies
Public record information, other than that obtained from a consumer
report
Transaction or experience information other than, or in addition to,
identifying information (e.g., payment history about an account the
consumer has with us)
Other (please specify):

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(iv)(I) – Identify whether you share or may share personally
identifiable transaction or experience information with affiliates for purposes related to
employment or hiring. In situations where personally identifiable transaction or
experience information is shared with affiliates for purposes related to employment or
hiring, identify whether the person that is the subject of shared information is given
notice of such sharing, and the specific uses of such shared information.
11. We share with, or receive from, our affiliates personally identifiable transaction or
experience information for purposes related to employment or hiring as follows (check all that
apply). If you do not share with your affiliates such information for purposes related to
employment or hiring and do not receive from your affiliates such information for these
purposes, skip to question 13.

Receive from

Share with

Use of personally identifiable transaction or experience information
for employment or hiring
We share with, or receive from, our affiliates personally identifiable
transaction or experience information for purposes related to employment
or hiring.

12. The consumer is notified of the sharing of personally identifiable transaction or experience
information and is notified of the use of such information for the purposes related to employment
or hiring.
Y

N

Notification to consumer
The consumer is notified of the sharing of such information but is not
notified of the specific uses.
The consumer is notified of the sharing of such information and is
notified about the specific uses of such information that is shared.
Other (please explain):

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(iv)(II) – Indicate whether you share or may share personally
identifiable transaction or experience information with affiliates for purposes of general
publication of such information.
13. We share with, or receive from, our affiliates personally identifiable transaction or
experience information for purposes related to general publication as follows (check all that
apply). If you do not share with your affiliates such information for purposes related to general
publication and do not receive from your affiliates such information for these purposes, skip to
question 14.
Receive from

Share with

General Publication Use of personally identifiable transaction or experience information
We share with, or receive from, our affiliates personally identifiable
transaction or experience information for purposes related to general
publication.
We share with, or receive from, our affiliates such information for
purposes of general publication in order to perfect a security interest, to
comply with escheat laws, or to comply with Federal, State, or local laws
or regulations.
We share with, or receive from, our affiliates such information for
purposes of general publication in widely distributed media.
Other (please explain):

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Section 214(e)(2)(B) – Describe the information sharing practices that you and your
affiliates employ for the purposes of making underwriting decisions or credit evaluations
of consumers.
14. We share with, or receive from, our affiliates consumer information for purposes related to
underwriting decisions or credit evaluations as follows (check all that apply). If you do not share
with your affiliates such consumer information for purposes related to underwriting decisions or
credit evaluations and do not receive from your affiliates such information for these purposes,
skip to question 17.
Receive from

Share with

We share with, or receive from, our affiliates consumer information for
purposes related to underwriting decisions or credit evaluations.
We share with, or receive from, our affiliates the following types of
information for underwriting decisions or credit evaluations:
Application information (e.g., an applicant’s identifying information,
income, assets, or liabilities)
Consumer report information, including credit scores, obtained from
consumer reporting agencies
Public record information, other than that obtained from a consumer
report
Transaction or experience information other than, or in addition to,
identifying information (e.g., payment history about an account the
consumer has with us)
Other (please specify):

15. We receive from our affiliates consumer information for purposes related to underwriting
decisions or credit evaluations as follows (check all that apply).
We use the consumer information we receive from affiliates for the
following purposes:
Determination of eligibility for a credit or insurance product.
Pricing for a credit or insurance product.
Portfolio analysis or reporting.
Providing services to affiliates
Risk management activities related to assets (e.g., behavioral modeling
and loss or claims management).
Other (please specify):
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16. We share with our affiliates consumer information, which they indicate that they intend to
use for the following purposes related to underwriting decisions or credit evaluations (check all
that apply).
We share consumer information with our affiliates for the following
purposes:
Determination of eligibility for a credit or insurance product.
Pricing for a credit or insurance product.
Portfolio analysis or reporting.
Providing services to affiliates
Risk management activities related to assets (e.g., behavioral modeling
and loss or claims management).
Other (please specify):

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(iii) – Identify the number of options you give consumers to control
the sharing of information with affiliates.
17. We give consumers the following options for controlling the sharing of information with
affiliates (check all that apply).
Y

N
We do not provide consumers with a choice because we
do not share consumer information with affiliates that is
subject to an opt-out requirement.
State laws limit our ability to share consumer
information with affiliates.

Type of information
Consumer
Transaction
Report
or
Information Experience
Information
Y
N
Y
N

Sharing options
We give consumers the ability to opt out of our sharing
this type of information with affiliates.
We give consumers the ability to opt in to our sharing
this type of information with affiliates.

Other options or comments:

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(iii) – Identify the degree to which consumers exercise choices, if at
all.
18. We estimate the following percentage of consumers have chosen to opt out (or opt in) of the
sharing of certain consumer information with our affiliates (check the appropriate box):
Opt- OptIn
Out

Degree to which consumers exercise choices
Don’t know (e.g. do not keep records of consumers that exercise these choices
in a manner that permits us to report this information)
Less than 2 percent
2 percent to under 4 percent
4 percent to under 6 percent
6 percent to under 8 percent
8 percent to under 10 percent
10 percent to under 16 percent
16 percent to under 20 percent
20 percent to under 30 percent
30 percent to under 40 percent
40 percent or more

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Section 214(e)(2)(A)(iii) – Identify the manner in which consumers exercise choices, if at
all.
19. We allow consumers to exercise their opt-out (or opt-in) choices through the following
methods (check all that apply):
Manner in which consumers exercise choices
E-mail
In person
Letter
Mailing back a tear-off form
Telephone
Web site
Other means (please specify):

20. For those consumers who opt out (or opt in) using the methods noted in the table below, we
estimate the percentages of consumers using each method are as follows (check the appropriate
percentage rate for all methods that apply; numbers should sum to roughly 100%).

Opt out (opt
in) method

Percentage of those consumers who opt out (or opt in)
(by method used)
Don’t
track
Don’t
0-25%
26-50%
51-75%
76-100% methods know

E-mail
Web site
Mailing back a
tear-off form
Telephone
In person
Letter
Other means

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The Agencies thank you for your responses to this survey. Please submit your completed survey
to the address provided above in the instructions by [30days from date sent].

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Appendix A
Glossary
The Agencies are providing the definitions in this glossary to help respondents generally to
understand terms used in the survey. These may not be legal definitions and in some cases they
may differ from the exact definition of the same term under federal or state law.
Affiliate
Any company related by common ownership or common corporate control with another
company. An affiliate includes an operating subsidiary of a bank or a savings association or a
credit union service organization controlled by a federal credit union.
Consumer
An individual.
Consumer information
Any record about an individual, whether in paper, electronic, or other form, that is a consumer
report or is derived from a consumer report and that is maintained or otherwise possessed by or
on behalf of an entity for a business purpose. Consumer information would also include
transaction or experience information. The term includes a compilation of such records; it does
not include any record that does not identify an individual.
Consumer report
Any written, oral, or other communication of any information by a consumer reporting agency
bearing on a consumer's credit worthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general
reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living that is used or expected to be used or
collected in whole or in part for the purpose of serving as a factor in establishing the consumer's
eligibility for: (1) credit or insurance to be used primarily for personal, family, or household
purposes; (2) employment purposes; or (3) any other purpose authorized under section 604 of the
Fair Credit Reporting Act. A report containing information solely as to transactions or
experiences between the consumer and the person making the report is classified as transaction
or experience information, and is not a consumer report. In this survey, the phrase “consumer
report information” refers to information obtained or derived from a consumer report.
Employment purposes
Evaluating an individual for hiring or evaluating an existing employee for promotion,
reassignment, or termination of employment.
General publication
For the purposes of this survey, general publication includes:
• federal, state, or local government records
• widely distributed media (e.g., telephone books or newspapers)
• disclosures to the general public that are required to be made by federal, state or local law.
Sharing information for purposes of general publication does not include furnishing information
to a consumer reporting agency.
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Opt-in
This term describes the prior permission granted by a consumer (an “opt-in”) before you can
share certain consumer information with an affiliate.
Opt-out
This term describes a consumer’s opportunity to instruct you not to share certain consumer
information with an affiliate (an “opt-out”). If a consumer does not opt out, you may share
information with an affiliate.
Sharing
For purposes of this survey, examples of sharing include consumer information that is:
• put in a common database to which your affiliates have access
• used jointly by you and your affiliate(s)
• used in certain centralized functions within an organization, such as mortgage underwriting
• collected from on-line banking activities and accessible to affiliates
• provided to one affiliate which, in turn, provides the same consumer information to another
Transaction or Experience Information (T or E)
For purposes of this survey, examples of transaction or experience information include:
• balance information on an account a consumer has at an institution
• payment history by a consumer on a loan at an institution
• classifications or characterizations of a consumer by an institution based on a consumer’s
history with an account at the institution (e.g., use of term “slow pay” to describe a
consumer’s payment history on a loan).

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