CFPB will not initiate HMDA enforcement actions for certain reporting failures

Federal Issues CFPB HMDA Mortgages

On December 6, the CFPB issued a blog post emphasizing that financial institutions may need time to implement or adjust policies, procedures, systems and operations to come into compliance with the new HMDA volume reporting threshold and that the agency does not view action regarding institutions’ HMDA data as a current priority. As previously covered by InfoBytes, in September, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted partial summary judgment to a group of consumer fair housing associations that challenged changes made in 2020 that permanently raised coverage thresholds for collecting and reporting data about closed-end mortgage loans and open-end lines of credit under HMDA. The 2020 Rule, which amended Regulation C, permanently increased the reporting threshold from the origination of at least 25 closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years to 100, and permanently increased the threshold for collecting and reporting data about open-end lines of credit from the origination of 100 lines of credit in each of the two preceding calendar years to 200 (covered by InfoBytes here). The plaintiffs sued the CFPB in 2020, arguing, among other things, that the final rule “exempts about 40 percent of depository institutions that were previously required to report” and undermines HMDA’s purpose by allowing potential violations of fair lending laws to go undetected. (Covered by InfoBytes here.)

According to the blog post, the Bureau “does not intend to initiate enforcement actions or cite HMDA violations for failures to report closed-end mortgage loan data collected in 2022, 2021 or 2020 for institutions subject to the CFPB’s enforcement or supervisory jurisdiction that meet Regulation C’s other coverage requirements and originated at least 25 closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years but fewer than 100 closed-end mortgage loans in either or both of the two preceding calendar years.”