The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently issued a statement regarding the partial exemption from Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reporting requirements for certain lower mortgage volume depository institution lenders that was adopted in the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (Act).

As we reported previously, the Act exempts depository institutions and credit unions from the new reporting categories added by Dodd-Frank and the HMDA rule adopted by the CFPB with regard to (1) closed-end loans, if the institution or credit union originated fewer than 500 such loans in each of the preceding two calendar years, and (2) home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), if the institution or credit union originated fewer than 500 HELOCs in each of the preceding two calendar years. The HELOC change will not initially affect reporting because, for 2018 and 2019, the threshold to report HELOCs is 500 transactions in each of the preceding two calendar years under a temporary CFPB rule.

The Act’s partial exemption from reporting the new HMDA data does not apply if the institution received a rating of “needs to improve record of meeting community credit needs” during each of its two most recent Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) examinations, or “substantial noncompliance in meeting community credit needs” on its most recent CRA examination.

The CFPB advises in its recent statement that it expects later this summer to provide further guidance on the applicability of the partial exemption to HMDA data collected in 2018. The CFPB also advises that the partial exemption will not affect the format of 2018 Loan Application Registers (LARs) and that:

• LARs will be formatted according to the previously-released 2018 Filing Instructions Guide for HMDA Data Collected in 2018 (2018 FIG).
• If an institution does not report information for a certain data field due to the partial exemption, the institution will enter an exemption code for the field specified in a revised 2018 FIG that the CFPB expects to release later this summer.
• All LARs will be submitted to the same HMDA Platform.

The CFPB also notes that a beta version of the HMDA Platform for submission of data collected in 2018 will be available later this year for filers to test.

In Financial Institution Letter FIL-36-2018 and in OCC Bulletin 2018-19 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, respectively, issued similar guidance to institutions.