Credit reporting

Readers weigh in on a blockchain-based credit bureau, react to the CFPB’s arbitration rule and chime in on calls to invest more in women.

Calls for less reliance on credit bureaus and Social Security numbers for verification are leading many to envision a future of identity on a distributed ledger.

Readers weigh in on online lending growth, how President Trump’s healthcare policies affect lenders, regulation’s effects on community banks and more.

Cybersecurity and breach notification procedures have caught the most public attention following the massive hack at Equifax, but lawmakers are also interested in the accuracy of credit reports.

Congress may soon try to limit the personal identifiable information that companies and the government can collect on consumers based on their reaction to the massive data breach at Equifax.

Not only will banks be on the hook for counterfeit loans to identity thieves, but they will likely lose loan volume, and ultimately revenue, from changes in consumer behavior.

Yes, the credit bureau goofed badly on data security, and it proved to be worse at crisis management. But other companies have been just as sloppy with cyber defenses, and business and government leaders should have tackled these problems long before now.

Equifax observed an increasingly well-worn ritual of scandal-ridden firms by jettisoning CEO Richard Smith: apologize, promise to do better in the future, and sacrifice your top executive in the hopes it will ward off action by Congress and regulators.

Summit Credit Union in Madison, Wis., has filed what's believed to be the first lawsuit by a financial institution in connection with the massive data breach.

Data breaches and payment hacks require not only tech measures, but crisis management. Had Equifax gotten out in front of the story, particularly during the slow news period of August, it would have earned kudos and perhaps mitigated some of the public scrutiny.