Fair Lending

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As discussed here, on April 26, the Texas Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association (ABA), and Rio Bank, McAllen, Texas (Rio Bank) filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas challenging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB or Bureau) final rule under § 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Final Rule). As discussed here, § 1071 amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to impose significant data collection and reporting requirements on small business creditors. The plaintiffs’ complaint relied heavily on the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Community Financial Services Association (CFSA) v CFPB, finding the CFPB’s funding structure unconstitutional and, therefore, rules promulgated by the Bureau invalid. The CFPB’s appeal of the Fifth Circuit’s decision is currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court (discussed here).

On July 27, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a new blog post, positing that cashflow data, broadly defined as the various inflows, outflows, and accumulated amounts in a consumer’s checking and savings accounts, may provide lenders with a better picture of a consumer’s ability to repay their loans than using a credit score.

On July 26, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) released the summer edition of its Supervisory Highlights report, providing a high-level overview of alleged unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices (UDAAP) identified by the agency during examinations from July 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. The findings included in the report cover examinations in the areas of auto origination, auto servicing, consumer reporting, debt collection, deposits, fair lending, information technology, mortgage origination, mortgage servicing, payday and small dollar lending, and remittances.

As recently discussed on our podcast here, section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require lenders to collect information about small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data concerning the principal owners, lending decisions, and the price of credit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued its proposed rule in 2021, and after considering the over 2,500 comments it received, on March 30, 2023, the CFPB issued the massive, highly technical, and complicated Final Rule. The Final Rule and its accompanying discussion and analysis, as well as the Official Commentary totals 888 pages exclusive of the 123-page Filing Instruction Guide and numerous other documents released by the Bureau. In this fourth in a multi-post blog series (first post available here, second here, third here), we will take a closer look at the anti-discouragement provisions in the Final Rule.

In Soaring Pine Capital Real Estate & Debt Fund II, LLC v. Park Street Group Realty Services, LLC, the Michigan Supreme Court considered whether a court may enforce a usury savings clause in a mortgage agreement. A usury savings clause is a contractual term requiring a borrower to pay the maximum legal interest rate if the court determines that the other contractual terms impose an illegal interest rate.

The American Association of Bank Directors (AABD) recently published the second edition of its Practical Handbook on Fair Lending for Bank Directors and Executive Officers (the Handbook), updating the first edition of the Handbook issued in 2016. David Baris, President of AABD, and Troutman Pepper partner Lori Sommerfield (two of the original authors) are again co-authors of the Handbook, together with Troutman Pepper partner Chris Willis and associate Sarah Pruett.

As shown by a new report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) is focusing its fair lending work on mortgage origination and pricing, small business lending, redlining, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models.

On June 29, the CFPB released its annual Fair Lending Report (Report) to Congress describing its fair lending enforcement and supervisory activities, guidance, and rulemaking for calendar year 2022. The Report satisfies the CFPB’s statutory responsibility to report annually to Congress on public enforcement actions taken pursuant to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA).

On June 29, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) announced the availability of data on 2022 mortgage lending transactions reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) by U.S. financial institutions, including banks, savings associations, credit unions, and mortgage companies. The Snapshot National Loan-Level Dataset contains the national HMDA datasets as of May 1, 2023. In March 2023, the FFIEC had made available Loan/Application Registers (LARs) for each HMDA filer of 2022 data, as well as a combined dataset for all filers, modified to protect borrower privacy.

Key observations about the 2022 HMDA data include the following:

As recently discussed on our podcast here, section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require lenders to collect information about small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data concerning the principal owners, lending decisions, and the price of credit. In September 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a proposed rule with more than 900 pages of supplementary material. The Bureau also issued a summary of the proposed rule and a chart of the data points that the rule would require creditors to collect, and it accepted approximately 2,100 comments on the proposal in January 2022. The Bureau then issued the Final Rule on March 30, 2023, with a host of supplementary materials. In this third in a multi-post blog series (first post available here, second here), we will take a closer look at what changed between the proposed rule and the Final Rule.

As recently discussed on our podcast here, section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require lenders to collect information about small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data concerning the principal owners, lending decisions, and the price of credit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued its massive, highly technical, and complicated Final Rule on March 30, 2023. In this second in a multi-post blog series (the first post is available here), we will take a closer look at the data collection and reporting requirements of the Final Rule.