CARES Act Required Current Reporting for COVID Relief

Case: Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), § 4021
Source: U.S. Congress
Citation: Pub. L. No. 116-136, § 4021, 134 Stat. 281, 489 (2020) (15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(a)(1)(F))
Decided: March 27, 2020
Bottom line: The CARES Act protection covered accommodations made from January 31, 2020 through August 8, 2023, so a late payment reported during a COVID-19 deferral you honored may still be disputable.

Background

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the economy in March 2020, millions of borrowers asked their lenders to defer or reduce payments. That created a credit reporting problem. A lender that agreed to let a customer skip payments could still report those skipped months as late, because the original contract said the payments were due. The Fair Credit Reporting Act did not, on its own, tell furnishers (the lenders, servicers, and collectors that send account data to the credit bureaus) how to report an account under a temporary relief agreement.

Congress addressed the issue in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, signed March 27, 2020. Section 4021, titled “Credit Protection During COVID-19,” amended 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(a)(1), the FCRA’s general duty on furnishers to report accurate information.

What the law does

Section 4021 added a new subparagraph (F) to § 1681s-2(a)(1). It has three main parts.

Accommodation. The term “accommodation” is defined broadly. It “includes an agreement to defer 1 or more payments, make a partial payment, forbear any delinquent amounts, modify a loan or contract, or any other assistance or relief granted to a consumer who is affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic during the covered period.”

The reporting rule. If a furnisher made an accommodation and the consumer made the payments, or was not required to make them, under that accommodation, the furnisher had to:

report the account as current; or
if the account was already delinquent before the accommodation, keep the delinquent status unchanged while the accommodation was in effect, and report the account as current if the consumer brought it current during that period.

Exception. The rule did not apply to accounts that had been charged off.

Covered period. The protection applied to accommodations during a “covered period” that began on January 31, 2020 and ended 120 days after the later of the law’s enactment or the end of the national emergency the President declared on March 13, 2020. Congress terminated that national emergency by joint resolution on April 10, 2023 (Pub. L. No. 118-3). Counting 120 days from that date, the covered period ended on August 8, 2023.

A separate section, § 3513, suspended payments on federally held student loans through September 30, 2020 and directed the Department of Education to treat each suspended payment, for credit reporting purposes, “as if it were a regularly scheduled payment made by a borrower.”

Our take

Section 4021 was a sensible, targeted fix. It did not order lenders to grant relief, and it did not erase delinquencies that existed before the pandemic. It simply said that if a lender agreed to change the payment terms and the borrower kept the new terms, the lender could not report the borrower as late for following that agreement. That is consistent with what accuracy should mean in the first place.

The statute also has limits that consumers should understand. It applies only when there was an actual accommodation. A borrower who stopped paying without an agreement was not covered. It froze rather than cured pre-existing delinquencies. And the FCRA does not let consumers sue directly for violations of the furnisher accuracy duties in § 1681s-2(a); those are enforced by government agencies. A consumer’s private remedy comes through the dispute process under § 1681s-2(b), which requires the furnisher to investigate after a credit bureau forwards a dispute.

The covered period has now ended, so the rule does not govern new accommodations. But the seven-year reporting window for late payments means accounts reported during the pandemic can still appear on credit reports today, and a lender’s obligation to report those months correctly did not expire with the emergency.

What it means if your report is wrong

If your report shows late payments during a period when your lender agreed in writing to a deferral, forbearance, or modification between early 2020 and August 2023, and you met the terms of that agreement, the late marks may be inaccurate. Find the accommodation letter, email, or account notes, and dispute the late payments in writing with each credit bureau that shows them. Include a copy of the agreement and keep proof of what you sent. If the lender verifies the late payments anyway, you may have a claim under the FCRA’s dispute provisions. A free case review can help you decide what to do next, and there is no fee unless we win.

Sources

Primary

Commentary we reviewed

Consumer Finance Monitor (Ballard Spahr) — CARES Act includes provisions on credit reporting and student loans

Updated November 1, 2026. "Our take" is the firm's opinion. This page is general information, not legal advice, and later decisions may change the law.