Today the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Bureau) issued an interpretive and procedural rule to implement and clarify the requirements of section 104(a) of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (the Act), which amended the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The Bureau also released updates to the Filing Instructions Guide (FIG) for HMDA data collected in 2018 to incorporate the Act as implemented and clarified by the rule issued today.
On May 24, 2018, the President signed the Act, which contains provisions that are intended to decrease the burden smaller depository institutions face in complying with HMDA and its implementing regulation, Regulation C. Some such institutions have raised questions about the application of the Act, and the rule issued today seeks to provide clarification. Specifically, the rule clarifies that insured depository institutions and insured credit unions covered by a partial exemption have the option of reporting exempt data fields as long as they report all data fields within any exempt data point for which they report data; clarifies that only loans and lines of credit that are otherwise HMDA reportable count toward the thresholds for the partial exemptions; clarifies which of the data points in Regulation C are covered by the partial exemptions; assigns a non-universal loan identifier for partially exempt transactions for institutions that choose not to report a universal loan identifier; and clarifies the exception to the partial exemptions for negative Community Reinvestment Act examination history.
At a later date, the Bureau anticipates that it will initiate a notice-and-comment rulemaking to incorporate these interpretations and procedures into Regulation C and further implement the Act.
The interpretive and procedural rule issued today is available at: https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/bcfp_hmda_interpretive-procedural-rule_2018-08.pdf
The updated Filing Instructions Guide (FIG) is available at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/cfpb-hmda-public/prod/help/2018-hmda-fig-2018-hmda-rule.pdf