During the Trump administration the Trump CFPB shrunk the HMDA requirements. Now the Biden CFPB, “plans to review recent changes to the rule and evaluate their effectiveness. This evaluation will strengthen the CFPB’s ability to maintain a fair, competitive, and non-discriminatory mortgage market.” On November 16, 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a Request for Information (RFI) to seek input on rules implementing the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).
Specifically, the CFPB will focus on:
- Institutional coverage and transactional coverage;
- Data points;
- Benefits of the new data and disclosure requirements; and
- Operational and compliance costs.
The CFPB welcomes the public’s input, and the RFI will remain open for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
The RFI follows an August 2021 HMDA report, which found that mortgage lenders more often deny credit and charge higher interest rates to Black and Hispanic applicants than they do to white applicants, and a July 2021 CFPB analysis of mortgage lending patterns within the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. The July 2021 CPFB analysis, using the expanded reporting of racial and ethnic data made possible by the 2015 HMDA rule, found considerable heterogeneity among AAPI communities, with some subgroups showing mortgage denial rates similar to those of Black and Hispanic borrowers. The CFPB has also made use of the enhanced data in a May 2021 report studying the financing of manufactured housing loans.