We are concerned with whether we are at risk of a violation in cases where we pull a credit report for a joint account and the fee is discounted due to it being pulled as a joint report... verses when we have an individual credit report to be pulled.
How are you maintaining a safe harbor?

I'm not sure what you mean by safe harbor. If you charge different fees to joint applicants vs. individual applicants for the credit report, you will be in trouble.

If you charge different fees to joint applicants vs. individual applicants for the credit report, you will be in trouble.

No you won't. What you will be in trouble for is if you pull joint reports only if the joint applicants are married and they receive a price break because of it.

What if most of your joint applicants are married, but some are not, and you pull joint reports on all joint applicants and give a price break to all joint applicants? Seems like muddy territory to me.

But there's no federal protection for "individual" or "joint" applicants. There IS protection for marital status.

So if, for example, a father and son apply for a joint loan and we pull their credit report jointly...(the same as we would for a married couple) then we would be in compliance, am I correct in this understanding?

Yes. Joint applicants can get a break on the fee vs. individual applicants so long as you treat all applicants who apply jointly the same, as Randy said.

What about the circumstance where we are only charging the fee that the Credit Bureau is charging us. In other words, it is a 3rd party fee that we pass directly on to the customer. Would we still have to be concerned with if we are pulling joint or individual credit reports?

That's the same circumstance we have. If the credit bureau is giving you the bank a break on joint pulls versus individual pulls, then yes, i think you would still need to be concerned about being sure that you are treating all joint applicants the same.

Thank you all for the clarification!

Yes, Thank you tons!!!

It doesn't matter what the credit agency charges the bank, it does matter what the borrower is charged, and there can be no favorable or unfavorable treatment - either the charge or how the credit is evaluated - based on marital status. If the agency gives a discount for joint reports, pass this discount along to all joint applicants and there is no issue. This is what our FDIC examiner told us.