Answer:
You may pull a consumer report on a proposed authorized signer if you have the authorized signer's written permission. Your difficulty in that circumstance would be that you could not share the results of that query with anyone else; e.g. the authorized signer's employer. If the employer knew you had pulled the report and then refused to accept the employee as a signatory, it would be pretty obvious to the employer that you did not like what you found in the consumer report.
You can refuse to accept an authorized signer for any reason or no reason; i.e. you can simply say: "We cannot accept Bobby as an authorized signer on this account." Yes, I know they are going to want a reason, but you are not obligated to provide one.
However, you may want to consider that if "Irresponsible Bobby" is signing on a corporate account he has no liability on the checks he signs anyway. There is no real logic in refusing to accept a signatory on an entity's account because he handles his own checking account poorly.
First published on BankersOnline.com 9/10/12
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