Special Alert: CFPB Adopts Significant Expansion of HMDA Reporting Requirements

HELOC HMDA

On October 15, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the CFPB or Bureau) issued a final rule that will expand the scope of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data reporting requirements while seeking to streamline certain existing requirements. Although some of the new data points the Bureau is requiring are expressly mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Bureau is also requiring a significant number of new data points based on discretionary rulemaking authority granted by the Act.

While we describe the amended rule below in greater detail, highlights include:

• Expanded data-collection under the revised rule will begin on January 1, 2018, and reporting will begin in 2019. The Bureau would have been allowed under Dodd-Frank to require data-collection beginning in 2017 (at least nine months after issuance of the rule) but responded to industry requests for more time to convert systems to meet the extensive new data-collection requirements of the amended rule.
• The amended rule substantially expands the number of data points collected from financial institutions, including requiring reporting of rate spreads on most originated loans and lines of credit, not just higher-cost closed-end loans. However, the Bureau still has not decided the extent to which this information, which includes sensitive personal data such as credit scores, will be publicly available. It will solicit additional public input on privacy concerns before it determines how much of the information will be disclosed.
• The amended rule will require financial institutions to report home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and reverse mortgages. However, in response to widespread criticism by industry commenters, the CFPB did not adopt its proposal to require reporting of all commercial-purpose loans secured by a dwelling.
• The amended rule does not make significant substantive changes to the definition of an “application” or to the “broker rule,” but it does reorganize and clarify existing Commentary provisions on those issues.
• The amended rule requires both depository and nondepository institutions that originated at least 25 closed-end mortgage loans or at least 100 open-end lines of credit in each of the two preceding calendar years to report HMDA data, so long as the institution meets all of the other tests for coverage of that type of institution.