Trigger Leads Law to Go Into Effect March 4, 2026

On March 4, the national “trigger leads” law will go into effect.

Scott Peyree, the CEO of Lending Tree, recently shared this explanation of trigger leads on the company’s Q4 earnings call.

“For those that do not know the trigger leads, the very basic version of that is when, for example, we develop a lead and sell to our mortgage providers and then they do a hard credit pull to provide a firm offer to the consumers, the credit bureaus will trigger them—this is what they call trigger leads—to sell it off to a bunch of third-party buyers that we have no association with, our clients have no association with.

It is basically saying, ‘hey, this consumer just got a hard pull on their credit from a mortgage company, so maybe you might want to call them.’ It turns into a really horrible consumer experience where they are about to close a mortgage, and then all of a sudden, they are getting another 50 or 60 calls from who knows who. Long story short, Congress passed a bill that basically said that can no longer happen, and that is coming in.”

– Scott Peyree, CEO, Lending Tree