The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a proposal to facilitate compliance with the 2015 updates to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) rule. The changes are intended to clarify the information companies are required to collect and report about their mortgage lending.

HMDA requires many financial institutions to maintain, report, and publicly disclose information about mortgages. The information is used by the government to assess whether lenders are serving the housing needs of their communities, to inform policy decisions, and uncover discriminatory lending patterns.

In October 2015, the CFPB implemented Dodd-Frank amendments to HMDA, changing the types of institutions and transactions subject to the regulation, the types of data that institutions are required to collect, and the processes for reporting and disclosing that required data. Most of the updated requirements take effect in January 2018,

Amid compliance preparations, the CFPB says, it because apparent that clarifications to the final rule, known as Regulation C, were needed.

The proposal contains a number of clarifications, technical corrections, and minor changes to the HMDA regulation. These include clarifying certain key terms, such as “temporary financing” and “automated underwriting system.” The proposal would also, for example, establish transition rules for reporting certain loans purchased by financial institutions. Another proposed change would facilitate reporting the census tract of a property, using a new geocoding tool the CFPB plans to provide online.

Comments on the proposal will be due 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

Topics