We are not aware of any Illinois laws that would affect your ability to pull credit reports as permitted by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act allows consumers to place a “security freeze” on their credit reports if concerned about identity theft, but it has several exceptions. For example, creditors may use a credit report for purposes of “reviewing the account or collecting the financial obligation owing for the account,” including “activities related to account maintenance, monitoring, credit line increases, and account upgrades and enhancements.” 815 ILCS 505/2MM(n)(1).

The quotation from the FTC Report you give refers to an FTC informal opinion: FTC Gowen letter (April 29, 1999). In that opinion, the FTC discusses the scope of account review required before a credit report can be obtained under 15 USC 1681b(a)(3)(A) (stating that a permissible purpose is “review or collection of an account of the consumer”). The FTC opinion quotes from the legislative history of FCRA, which stated that “this provision, however, is limited to an account review for the purpose of deciding whether to retain or modify current account terms.” S. Rep. No. 104-185 at 35 (1995). The FCRA also requires that you have procedures in place to certify the purposes for which the credit report is sought and that the information will be used for no other purposes. 15 USC 1681e(a). Both the FTC opinion letter and the Senate Report made those comments to emphasize that banks should not obtain credit reports for the purpose of offering additional products or services to consumers. However, as the Gowen letter points out, if the terms of your agreement with a consumer do not allow you to modify the account terms, it would be difficult to see that you had a permissible purpose to pull the consumer’s credit report. But if the contract allows you to modify account terms, for example in the case of default, you could have a permissible purpose to pull the report.