On December 21, 2017, under the direction of Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “CFPB”) announced that it intends to reopen the rulemaking process to reconsider various aspects of the CFPB’s 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Rule (the “HMDA Rule”). In reopening the rulemaking process for the HMDA Rule, the CFPB intends to reconsider (i) the institutional and transactional coverage tests and (ii) certain other aspects of the HMDA Rule’s discretionary data points. 

Specifically, the CFPB announced its plans to reexamine the following:

• lending-activity criteria that determine whether institutions are required to report mortgage data;
• whether adjustments may be needed to the new requirements to report certain types of transactions; and
• whether the additional information that the HMDA Rule requires be collected is beyond the scope of what is required under the Dodd-Frank Act.

In addition, the CFPB recognized the operational challenges needed to meet the requirements under the impending HMDA Rule. Accordingly, the CFPB stated that is does not intend to require financial institutions to (i) resubmit data unless data errors are material, or (ii) pay penalties with respect to data errors related to data collected in 2018.

Importantly, for data collected in 2017, financial institutions are still expected to submit their data in 2018 in accordance with current Regulation C and institutions will still be required to submit data using the CFPB’s new HMDA Platform.

To view the full text of the CFPB’s Announcement, click here.

To view the full text of the CFPB’s HMDA Rule, click here.