Credit assessment agents: rights of persons concerned and supervision by the Autorité des marchés financiers
Credit Assessment Agents Act, CQLR c A-8.2
In force since .
A data brokers rule binding private bodies.
- Enforcement body
- Autorité des marchés financiers
- Obligation class
- Data subject rights, Governance, Reporting, Licensing
- Audit expectation
- periodic
- Who audits it
- Regulator
- Where the report goes
- Filed with regulator
What it requires
- If the Autorité des marchés financiers has designated you a credit assessment agent, give a person concerned by a record you hold, on request, his or her credit rating with the explanations necessary to understand it, and apply the protection measures the person requests: a security freeze, a security alert or an explanatory statement.
- Answer a request to exercise a right in writing, granting it or giving reasons for refusing it and the person’s recourses, promptly and within the time the Government sets by regulation.
- Do not charge a fee for exercising a right under the Act, other than for placing a security freeze, and do not take the exercise of a right into account in producing a credit rating or other personal information about the person.
- Let any person concerned by a record you hold access the personal information it contains via Internet, free of charge.
- Adhere to sound commercial practices: give appropriate information on the rights, provide appropriate means of communication, adopt a complaints processing and dispute resolution policy, keep a complaints register, and send each complainant a notice of the registration within 10 days.
- Adhere to appropriate management practices, be able to show the Authority that you adhere to both sets of practices, and prepare the annual statement of your affairs in Québec and the reports the Authority requires.
- Declare to the Authority, within 30 days, any change in the information about you in the register of credit assessment agents.
- Comply with the Authority’s orders, which carry monetary administrative penalties and, if contravened, penal fines.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Anyone who contravenes an order of the Authority commits an offence under section 93 and is liable, in the case of a natural person, to a fine of $5,000 to $100,000 or to a maximum term of imprisonment of 18 months, or to both, and in any other case to a fine of $30,000 to $2,000,000.
Penalty structure
The figure is the penal fine ceiling in section 93 for a person other than a natural person.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- CAD
- Fixed cap
- 2,000,000
What it makes you log
Who may demand the log
Regulator
Logging duty
The agent keeps a complaints register and a record for each complaint; the Act names no fields for the register.
- Kind
- Explicit
- As of
- Provision
- CQLR c A-8.2, s. 35
- Trigger
- personal_data_processing
What this law does
A credit assessment agent is a personal information agent, within the meaning of the second paragraph of section 70 of the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, that the Autorité des marchés financiers has designated. The Autorité des marchés financiers supervises and controls the commercial practices and management practices of credit assessment agents.
A person concerned by a record a credit assessment agent holds is entitled to obtain from the agent communication of his or her credit rating, with the explanations necessary to understand it, and to have the agent take each of the protection measures that Division I provides for.
A security freeze prohibits the agent from communicating personal information in the record for the purpose of entering into a credit contract, increasing credit extended under such a contract or entering into a long-term contract of lease of goods or a contract involving sequential performance for a service provided at a distance. A person must be able to exercise a right that the Act confers, other than the right to have a security freeze placed on a record, free of charge.
A credit assessment agent must allow any person concerned by a record the agent holds to access, free of charge, the personal information it contains via Internet. A credit assessment agent must adhere to sound commercial practices, which include adopting a complaints processing and dispute resolution policy and keeping a complaints register. A credit assessment agent must prepare an annual statement of the position of its affairs in Québec.
A credit assessment agent must declare to the Autorité des marchés financiers within 30 days any change required to be made to the information about it in the register of credit assessment agents. Anyone who contravenes an order of the Autorité des marchés financiers commits an offence and is liable, in the case of a natural person, to a fine of $5,000 to $100,000 or to a maximum term of imprisonment of 18 months, or to both, and in any other case to a fine of $30,000 to $2,000,000.
The Act came into force on , except for the provisions on security freezes and sections 9, 18, 108 and 111, which come into force on the date the Government sets.
When LexLint raises it
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