On May 24, 2018, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (the Act) was enacted into law. Section 104(a) of the Act amends section 304(i) of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) by adding partial exemptions from HMDA's requirements for certain insured depository institutions and insured credit unions. Specifically, a covered institution does not need to collect or report certain data with respect to closed-end mortgage loans if it originated fewer than 500 closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years. Similarly, the Act provides that a covered institution does not need to collect or report certain data with respect to open-end lines of credit if it originated fewer than 500 open-end lines of credit in each of the two preceding calendar years.
Financial institutions have raised questions about the new partial HMDA exemptions and how the exemptions affect collection and reporting of data for transactions with final action taken in 2018 or subsequent years. On August 31, 2018, the Bureau issued an interpretive and procedural rule that implements and clarifies section 104(a) of the Act and effectuates the purposes of the Act and HMDA.
Primarily, the rule:
- Clarifies that insured depository institutions and insured credit unions covered by a partial exemption have the option of reporting exempt data fields as long as they report all data fields within any exempt data point for which they report data;
- Clarifies that only loans and lines of credit that are otherwise HMDA reportable count toward the thresholds for the partial exemptions;
- Clarifies which of the data points in Regulation C are covered by the partial exemptions;
- Designates a non-universal loan identifier for partially exempt transactions for institutions that choose not to report a universal loan identifier; and
- Clarifies the exception to the partial exemptions for negative Community Reinvestment Act examination history.
This rule is effective as of September 7, 2018. The new rule can be reviewed in its entirety here.
In addition, an executive summary of the rule which includes some helpful tables can be viewed here.
The Bureau has indicated it intends to initiate a notice-and-comment rulemaking to incorporate these interpretations and procedures into Regulation C and further implement the Act. Stay tuned for additional details about these changes as they come available.