Under these proposed new limits, financial institutions would have to provide their customers with clear and conspicuous disclosure that their personal financial information may be communicated among affiliates for solicitation and marketing purposes.

In addition, financial institutions would have to provide their customers with an opportunity and "simple method" for prohibiting any solicitation or marketing.

The federal banking agencies and other federal government agencies would develop regulations to implement the new limitation within six months after the enactment of the act. The regulations would become effective three months after they are issued.

Catherine Willis, director of government relations with the Des Plaines, Ill.-based National Association of Independent Insurers, said the proposed limitation is overly broad and overly encompassing.

There are few definitions associated with the limitation, she said. Moreover, the nine-month compliance deadline will be impossible to meet.

Ms. Willis said that the staff of Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., is working on some of these technical problems.

NAII's position, she said, is that the current preemptions in FCRA should continue and be made permanent.

The draft is being developed for a Senate Banking Committee session on FCRA, which must be reauthorized this year. The session was originally scheduled for Sept. 18, but was postponed, because of Hurricane Isabel, until next week.

When the Committee meets on FCRA reauthorization, Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., is expected to offer an amendment calling for a study on the effect of insurance company credit scoring on the availability and affordability of financial products.

The study would be conducted by the Federal Trade Commission and consider, among other things, the extent to which credit scoring results in "disparate impact" based on "geography, income, ethnicity, race color, religion, national origin, age sex, marital status and creed."

Ms. Willis said such a study would be massively unwieldy and costly.

A similar study provision appears in the legislation approved by the House recently. A unit of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners this week put off action on its own "disparate impact" credit study and said it would instead coordinate a number of such studies by individual states.