CUNA Faults CFPB on HMDA Data Collection

The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) has criticized the magnitude of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) efforts to collect Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data.

In a comment letter filed with the Office of Management and Budget, CUNA stated that the CFPB is exceeding the Dodd-Frank Act requirements on HMDA data collection, which requires 17 data fields. The CFPB, according to the trade group, is pursuing “a staggering 48 data fields.” far more than the 17 required by law.

“While Congress did authorize the CFPB to collect ‘such other information as the bureau may require,’ it is unlikely this grant is an unbridled delegation to the CFPB to more than double the amount of express data points that Congress had indicated for the bureau to collect,” the CUNA letter complained.

CUNA also faulted the CFPB for not what HMDA data it plans to make public, which is also among the Dodd-Frank requirements.

“In the HMDA rulemaking, the CFPB fell well short of this mandate and only adopted a ‘balancing test’ to balance the importance of releasing the data to accomplish HMDA’s public disclosure purposes against the potential harm to an applicant or borrower’s privacy interest that may result from the release of the data without modification,” the letter continued. “Input solely on a nebulous balancing test is in fact a blatant disregard of the statutory requirement to provide regulations, in consultation with other banking regulatory agencies, to determine which data points will be public.”

CUNA also requested an extension of the HMDA data collection compliance deadline to be moved to Jan. 1, 2018, with reporting to begin one year after. It also sought an exemption for institutions issuing 500 covered closed-end loans and 1,000 covered open-end loans, as well as a clearly defined safe harbor period for institutions making a good-faith effort to meet compliance guidelines.