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Congress passed the FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act) Act on December 4, 2015. Title LXXXIX of the FAST Act is the Helping Expand Lending Practices in Rural Communities Act of 2015 (HELP Rural Communities Act). Congress removed the word “predominantly” from the phrase “operates predominantly in rural or underserved areas” in sections 129C and 129D of the Truth in Lending Act. The phrase is used to define, in part, which creditors are permitted to make […]

Numerous regulatory requirements have thresholds that change annually. Following is a review of several of the lending thresholds that have changed recently. CRA – Small Bank and Intermediate Small Bank – Effective January 1, 2016 each federal financial institution regulatory agency defines the term “small bank” to mean a bank that, as of December 31 of either of the prior two calendar years, had assets of less than $1.216 billion. The term “intermediate small bank” means a small […]

Recently the CFPB published the Fall 2015 version of its Semi-Annual Agenda. As expected, it is full of changes that will occupy us for years to come. Arbitration – The CFPB is in the early phases of the rulemaking process to address concerns related to the use of arbitration agreements in connection with credit cards, deposit accounts, payday loans and various other consumer financial products or services. The agency may prevent companies from using these agreements […]

We have had several recent questions on this topic. What constitutes an application for TRID is very different from the concept of “application” for the purpose of providing an adverse action notice under Regulation B or reporting data under Regulation C. It would take a large book to thoroughly explore all the nuances of “applications” under federal laws. This article explores only a few basic concepts. Regulation Z Under Section 1026.2(a)(3)(ii), for transactions subject to […]

We discussed the issue of the small bank exemption from the new flood insurance escrow requirements in previous articles entitled Flood Rule Conundrum and Flood Rule Conundrum – Part II. We almost called this one Flood Rule Conundrum – Part III, but we thought that would be too repetitious too repetitious. The issue is whether a small bank, that had previously escrowed for Higher-Priced Mortgage Loans (HPML), could be eligible for the new exemption from […]