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CFPB adjusts asset-size exemption thresholds for Regulations C and Z
On December 18, the CFPB adjusted the asset-size exemption thresholds for Regulation C (as part of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) and Regulation Z (as part of TILA), based on a 4.1 percent increase in the average year-over-year CPI-W from November. For Regulation C, the exemption threshold increased from $54 million to $56 million. Accordingly, any financial institution with assets of $56 million or less is exempt from collecting housing-related lending data in 2024.
For Regulation Z, and certain first-lien higher-priced mortgage loans, the exemption threshold increased from $2.537 billion to $2.640 billion. Similarly, but applicable to certain insured depository institutions and insured credit unions, the exemption threshold increased from $11.374 billion to $11.835 billion.
CFPB adjusts annual dollar amount thresholds under TILA, HMDA regulations
On September 18, the CFPB released a final rule revising the dollar amounts for provisions implementing TILA and its amendments that impact loans under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 (HOEPA) and qualified mortgages (QM). The Bureau is required to make annual adjustments to dollar amounts in certain provisions in Regulation Z, and has based the adjustments on the annual percentage change reflected in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) in effect on June 1, 2023. The following thresholds are effective January 1, 2024:
- For HOEPA loans the adjusted total loan amount threshold for high-cost mortgages will be $26,092, and the adjusted points-and-fees dollar trigger for high-cost mortgages will be $1,305;
- For qualified mortgages under the General QM loan definition, the thresholds for the spread between the annual percentage rate and the average prime offer rate will be: “2.25 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction with a loan amount greater than or equal to $130,461; 3.5 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction with a loan amount greater than or equal to $78,277 but less than $130,461; 6.5 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction with a loan amount less than $78,277; 6.5 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction secured by a manufactured home with a loan amount less than $130,461; 3.5 or more percentage points for a subordinate-lien covered transaction with a loan amount greater than or equal to $78,277; or 6.5 or more percentage points for a subordinate-lien covered transaction with a loan amount less than $78,277”; and
- For all QM categories, the adjusted thresholds for total points and fees will be “3 percent of the total loan amount for a loan greater than or equal to $130,461; $3,914 for a loan amount greater than or equal to $78,277 but less than $130,461; 5 percent of the total loan amount for a loan greater than or equal to $26,092 but less than $78,277; $1,305 for a loan amount greater than or equal to $16,308 but less than $26,092; and 8 percent of the total loan amount for a loan amount less than $16,308.”
With respect to credit card annual adjustments, the Bureau noted that its 2024 annual adjustment analysis on the CPI-W in effect on June 1, did not result in an increase to the current minimum interest charge threshold (which requires “creditors to disclose any minimum interest charge exceeding $1.00 that could be imposed during a billing cycle”).
FFIEC releases 2023 HMDA reporting guide
On April 13, the OCC issued Bulletin 2023-10 announcing the Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council’s issuance of the 2023 edition of the revised “A Guide to HMDA Reporting: Getting It Right!” The guide focuses on HMDA data submissions due March 1, 2024, and includes requirements and instructions for reporting and disclosing data for institutions and transactions covered by Regulation C. The guide also reflects a technical amendment to the 2020 HMDA Rule to adjust the loan volume thresholds (which took effect January 1) for reporting HMDA data on closed-end mortgage loans. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the CFPB issued the technical amendment last December to establish that the threshold for reporting data about closed-end mortgage loans is 25 mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years, the threshold established by the 2015 HMDA Rule.
CFPB issues 2023 HMDA institutional and transactional coverage charts
On March 15, the CFPB released the 2023 HMDA institutional and transactional coverage charts. The charts update the reporting thresholds for transactions that involve a closed-end mortgage loan, pursuant to an order issued last September by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in National Community Reinvestment Coalition v. CFPB. (Covered by InfoBytes here.) As previously covered by InfoBytes, in 2020 the CFPB issued a final rule, which amended Regulation C and 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.
The 2023 HMDA Institutional Coverage Chart outlines criteria for determining whether an institution is covered by Regulation C. Additionally, the 2023 HMDA Transactional Coverage Chart explains that under HMDA/Regulation C, a transaction is reportable only if it is an application for, an origination of, or a purchase of a covered loan. The chart explains how to determine whether a transaction involves a covered loan and whether it meets the applicable loan-volume thresholds.
Agencies remind banks of HMDA reporting changes on closed-end mortgages
On February 1, the OCC reminded banks and OCC examiners that the loan origination threshold for reporting HMDA data on closed-end mortgages has changed due to a court decision issued last year, which addressed challenges made by a group of consumer fair housing associations to changes made in 2020 by the CFPB that permanently raised coverage thresholds for collecting and reporting data about closed-end mortgage loans and open-end lines of credit under HMDA (covered by InfoBytes here.) Due to a court order vacating the 2020 HMDA Final Rule as to the loan volume reporting threshold for closed-end mortgage loans, the OCC explained that the loan origination threshold for reporting HMDA data on closed-end mortgage loans reverted to the threshold established by the 2015 HMDA Final Rule.
According to Bulletin 2023-5, the threshold for reporting HMDA data is now 25 closed-end mortgage loans originated in each of the two preceding calendar years rather than the 100-loan threshold set by the 2020 HMDA Final Rule. “Banks that 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 (referred to collectively as affected banks) may need to make adjustments to policies and procedures to comply with reporting obligations,” the OCC said. The agency added that it does not plan to assess penalties for failures to report closed-end mortgage loan data on reportable transactions conducted in 2022, 2021 or 2020 for affected banks that meet other coverage requirements under Regulation C.
The FDIC and Federal Reserve Board also issued similar guidance (see FIL-06-2023 and CA 23-1).
CFPB adjusts annual dollar amount thresholds under TILA, HMDA regulations
On December 21, the CFPB released a final rule revising the dollar amounts for provisions implementing TILA and its amendments that impact loans under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 (HOEPA) and qualified mortgages (QM). The Bureau is required to make annual adjustments to dollar amounts in certain provisions in Regulation Z, and has based the adjustments on the annual percentage change reflected in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) in effect on June 1, 2022. The following thresholds are effective January 1, 2023:
- For open-end consumer credit plans under TILA, the threshold for disclosing an interest charge will remain unchanged at $1.00;
- For HOEPA loans, the adjusted total loan amount threshold for high-cost mortgages will be $24,866, and the adjusted points-and-fees dollar trigger for high-cost mortgages will be $1,243;
- For qualified mortgages under the General QM loan definition, the thresholds for the spread between the annual percentage rate and the average prime offer rate will be: “2.25 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction with a loan amount greater than or equal to $124,331; 3.5 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction with a loan amount greater than or equal to $74,599 but less than $124,331; 6.5 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction with a loan amount less than $74,599; 6.5 or more percentage points for a first-lien covered transaction secured by a manufactured home with a loan amount less than $124,331; 3.5 or more percentage points for a subordinate-lien covered transaction with a loan amount greater than or equal to $74,599; or 6.5 or more percentage points for a subordinate-lien covered transaction with a loan amount less than $74,599”; and
- For all QM categories, the adjusted thresholds for total points and fees will be “3 percent of the total loan amount for a loan greater than or equal to $124,331; $3,730 for a loan amount greater than or equal to $74,599 but less than $124,331; 5 percent of the total loan amount for a loan greater than or equal to $24,866 but less than $74,599; $1,243 for a loan amount greater than or equal to $15,541 but less than $24,866; and 8 percent of the total loan amount for a loan amount less than $15,541.”
With respect to credit card annual adjustments, the Bureau noted that its 2023 annual adjustment analysis on the CPI-W in effect on June 1, did not result in an increase to the current minimum interest charge threshold (which requires “creditors to disclose any minimum interest charge exceeding $1.00 that could be imposed during a billing cycle”).
The Bureau also issued a final rule adjusting the asset-size threshold under HMDA (Regulation C). Under HMDA, institutions with assets below certain dollar thresholds are exempt from collection and reporting requirements. The final rule increases the asset-size exemption threshold for banks, savings associations, and credit unions from $50 million to $54 million, thereby exempting institutions with assets of $54 million or less as of December 31, 2022, from collecting HMDA data in 2023.
CFPB issues HMDA technical amendment
On December 12, the CFPB issued a technical amendment to the HMDA Rule to reflect the closed-end mortgage loan reporting threshold of 25 mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years. 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 (collectively, “plaintiffs”) 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.) As a result of the September 23 order, the threshold for reporting data about closed-end mortgage loans is 25, the threshold established by the 2015 HMDA Rule.
District Court criticizes CFPB’s cost-benefit analysis in HMDA change
On September 23, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted partial summary judgment to a group of consumer fair housing associations (collectively, “plaintiffs”) 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. As previously covered by InfoBytes, 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. 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.) The plaintiffs also claimed that the agency’s cost-benefit analysis underlying the 2020 Rule was “flawed because the Bureau exaggerated the ‘benefits’ of increasing the loan-volume reporting thresholds by failing to adequately account for comments suggesting that the savings would be much smaller than estimated, and by relying on overinflated estimates of cost savings to newly-exempted lending institutions with smaller loan volumes.” The plaintiffs asked that the 2020 Rule be vacated and set aside on the grounds that the Bureau acted outside of its statutory authority in issuing the 2020 Rule and violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The Bureau countered that issuing the 2020 Rule was within its scope of authority because HMDA’s text “does not unambiguously foreclose” the agency’s interpretation of the statute.
The court first determined that promulgation of the 2020 Rule did not exceed the Bureau’s statutory authority because “HMDA grants broad discretion ‘in the judgment of the’ agency to create ‘exceptions’ to the statutory reporting requirements…” “[E]ven a regulation relieving roughly forty percent of institutions from data collection and reporting requirements is an exception to the ‘rule’ of disclosure, which continues to apply to the majority of institutions,” the court wrote, adding that the 2020 Rule preserves the reporting requirements, “as compared to the 2015 Rule, for most institutions, the vast majority of loans, and the vast majority of communities.”
However, the court agreed with the plaintiffs that the cost-benefit analysis for the 2020 Rule’s increased reporting threshold for closed-end mortgage loans was arbitrary and capricious. The court expressed criticism of the cost-benefit analysis used by the Bureau to justify setting the minimum number of closed-end loans in each of the two preceding calendar years at 100, and found that the Bureau failed to adequately explain or support its rationales for revising and adopting the closed-end reporting thresholds under the 2020 Rule. The Bureau “conceded the new rule would cause identifiable harms to the public, but effectively threw up its proverbial hands, citing an inability to incorporate these harms into its analysis as quantifiable ‘costs,’ and moved on to the next topic of discussion,” the court said.
The Bureau “exaggerated the savings to ‘covered persons’ under the new rule, and did not engage appropriately with the nonquantifiable ‘harms’ of the 2020 Rule, and the disparate impact of those harms on the traditionally underserved populations HMDA is intended to protect, even as it conceded the revised threshold would certainly result in some harm to consumers,” the court said, questioning the Bureau’s analysis of disparate impacts on rural and low-to-moderate-income communities. The court determined that the plaintiffs identified several flaws in the Bureau’s cost-benefit analysis supporting the increased closed-end mortgage loan threshold, thus rendering this aspect of the 2020 Rule “arbitrary, capricious and requiring vacatur.” The court asked the Bureau for a “more reasoned explanation as to whether and how the cost-benefit analysis accounted for the ongoing need to collect data on home mortgages pursuant to other statutory requirements and underwriting purposes, and why, when a lender must collect and report multiple data points for each mortgage and loan application, the marginal cost of collecting the additional, HMDA-specific data points is so significant that the increased reporting threshold of the 2020 Rule renders unique cost savings.”
CFPB releases annual HMDA and TILA adjustments
On December 23, the CFPB announced final rules adjusting the asset-size thresholds under HMDA (Regulation C) and TILA (Regulation Z). Both rules took effect January 1, 2022. Under HMDA, institutions with assets below certain dollar thresholds are exempt from the collection and reporting requirements. The final rule increases the asset-size exemption threshold for banks, savings associations, and credit unions from $48 million to $50 million, thereby exempting institutions with assets of $50 million or less as of December 31, 2021, from collecting and reporting HMDA data in 2022. TILA, likewise, exempts certain entities from the requirement to establish escrow accounts when originating higher-priced mortgage loans (HPMLs), including entities with assets below the asset-size threshold established by the CFPB. The final rule increases this asset-size exemption threshold from $2.230 billion to $2.336 billion, thereby exempting creditors with assets of $2.336 billion or less as of December 31, 2021, from the requirement to establish escrow accounts for HPMLs in 2022.
CFPB delivers 2020 fair lending report to Congress
On April 14, the CFPB issued its annual fair lending report to Congress, which outlines the Bureau’s efforts in 2020 to fulfill its fair lending mandate, while protecting consumers against the resulting economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the report, the Bureau continued to focus on promoting fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory access to credit, highlighting several fair lending priorities that continued from years past such as mortgage origination, small business lending, and student loan origination. The report also discusses new policy areas and programs for fair lending examinations or investigations, including (i) the Fair Lending Help Desks; (ii) amendments concerning Regulation C, which will increase the permanent threshold for collecting, recording, and reporting data about open-end lines of credit from 100 to 200; and (iii) two HMDA data point articles. Additionally, the report discusses the Bureau’s efforts in expanding access to credit for underserved or underbanked populations, including: (i) hosting the first “Tech Sprint” (covered by InfoBytes here) to encourage regulatory innovation and stakeholder collaboration; (ii) continuing to examine and investigate institutions for compliance with HMDA and ECOA; (iii) engaging with stakeholders to discuss fair lending compliance, issues related to credit access, and policy decisions; and (iv) issuing Supervisory Recommendations relating to weak or nonexistent fair lending policies and procedures, risk assessments, and fair lending training. The report also provides information related to regulation, supervision, enforcement, and education efforts.