The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
In 1970, Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which regulates the collection, dissemination, and use of consumer information, including consumer credit information. This was the first time individuals had the potential to access a full list of information lenders used to make decisions about loan products and credit options.
When ACORN started offering their First Time Homebuyer Program classes, they found that helping individuals access, review, and file corrections to their credit reports led to a faster, accurate, and more successful loan application process. In the 1990's, it cost at minimum $10 to get a copy of your credit report from a consumer reporting agency (CRA), and it had to be done through a limited-access system. …
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created to provide a single point of accountability for enforcing federal consumer financial laws and protecting consumers in the financial marketplace."
[ And so it was - until November 2017, when Trump appointed a CFPB opponent as acting head of the agency. See The CFPB Is Under Attack for more. ]
In January 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Prior to this, there were at least seven different regulators who were responsible for various aspects of consumer finance, and some rules had not been updated in many years. As you might imagine there were gaps in coverage, and when you added in a lack of comminication between regulators, the banks and other lenders (especially mortgage brokers and so-called "payday lenders") were left effectively unregulated.
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