[mdunker]

we are trying to avoid having to make sure that we don’t charge the wrong amount for a credit report fee for our customers on residential loan transactions. We have found out that we can’t charge more for joint applicants that are not married and we run two separate reports on than we do with joint married applicants. With this being said we would like to not list the credit report fee on the LE, we would then pay the fee. Is this something that we can do?

[rcooper]

This is an issue that has been around for many years. It can be considered a fair lending or UDAAP issue. Here is a link to older but relevant ABA article on the topic: https://www.aba.com/Compliance/Documents/ce24c8f593a24f1ead883b4ce2648284SA_JointCreditReportsandFairLending2010Apr.pdf.

Check with your credit bureau – you may be able to pull credit reports for non-married joint applicants. Another option might be to pull individual credit reports for everyone. The important thing to remember is ensure everyone is treated the same, which is the point the article linked above makes.

If your bank decides to cover the cost of the credit report, you would still need to disclose the fee on the LE along with a specific lender credit to offset it.

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