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The advocacy of both the Credit Union National Association and state leagues, including the Maine CU League, has led to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reversing its position on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data reporting requirements in 2018. The bureau issued a statement on Thursday, December 21, that it intends to open a rulemaking to reconsider various aspects of the Bureau’s 2015 HMDA rule and will not assess penalties for errors in data collected in 2018. Your League has been involved in this effort with CUNA since 2015, and was successful in getting Congressman Poliquin to join with other members of the House Financial Services Committee to send a letter to then-CFPB Director Richard Cordray expressing concerns about the rule. "In light of the potential of the new rule to reduce consumer access to mortgage credit, we write to request that the CFPB provide analysis on the effects of applying higher exemption thresholds based on an institution's annual mortgage origination volume," the letter read. "Higher thresholds would help alleviate the potential adverse impact of the final rule."
"This is a significant win for credit unions, as CUNA has urged the bureau for years for relief from HMDA requirements that place a heavy burden on credit unions,” said CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle in a release sent to your League. "Credit unions will be unduly burdened by the data reporting requirements finalized in October 2015, and CUNA will fully engage with the bureau during this rulemaking process to ease these reporting requirements on credit unions."
The CFPB’s announcement indicated the bureau intends to engage in a rulemaking to reconsider various aspects of the 2015 HMDA rule. Specifically, it may re-examine lending activity criteria that determine whether institutions are required to report mortgage data.
According to the bureau, this rulemaking may re-assess the additional information that the rule requires beyond new data points specified in the Dodd-Frank Act. CUNA has long pushed the bureau to limit reporting requirements to those in the Dodd-Frank Act. The October 2015 HMDA rule requires reporting of twice as many data points.
Your League will provide further updates on this development and the process as they become available.