June 28: Recent CFPB Activities
PUBLISHED
The CFPB’s 2023 fair lending annual report to congress
CFPB released its Fair Lending Annual Report to Congress, describing how we took action against unlawful discrimination and advanced access to fair credit in calendar year 2023.
The CFPB used every tool at our disposal to carry out our fair lending work, from enforcement and supervision to guidance and rulemaking, including close coordination with our state and federal partners.
The CFPB took action against repeat offender Citibank for intentional, illegal discrimination against Armenian Americans applying for credit cards. The CFPB and Department of Justice also sued a Texas-based developer named Colony Ridge for discriminatorily targeting Latinos with inferior mortgage products. The CFPB also identified significant issues around institutions failing to report demographic information required under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). In addition to addressing issues through the supervisory process, we filed two public enforcement actions against repeat offenders, Freedom Mortgage and Bank of America, for inaccurate reporting of HMDA data.
PUBLISHED
CFPB Issues Interim Final Rule to Extend Compliance Dates for the Small Business Lending Rule
The CFPB has issued an interim final rule extending the small business lending rule’s compliance dates and making other date-related conforming adjustments.
The interim final rule is available here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/final-rules/small-business-lending-under-the-equal-credit-opportunity-act-regulation-b-extension-of-compliance-dates/.
CFPB Extends Compliance Dates for Small Business Lending Rule
Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an interim final rule to extend compliance deadlines for the small business lending rule. After the CFPB issued the small business lending rule on March 30, 2023, a federal court in Texas stayed the rule pending the Supreme Court’s decision in CFPB v. CFSA. The Texas court also required the CFPB to extend the rule’s compliance deadlines to compensate for the period stayed. Today’s interim final rule follows the recent Supreme Court decision in CFPB v. CFSA.
The interim final rule extends compliance dates by 290 days, which is the time that has elapsed between the Texas court’s first issuance of a stay last year and the Supreme Court’s decision in CFPB v. CFSA last month. Lenders with the highest volume of small business loans must begin collecting data by July 18, 2025; moderate volume lenders by January 16, 2026; and the smallest volume lenders by October 18, 2026. The deadline for reporting small business lending data to the CFPB remains June 1 following the calendar year for which data are collected. Thus, high volume lenders will first submit data by June 1, 2026, while moderate and low volume lenders will first submit data by June 1, 2027. Under the interim final rule, lenders may continue using their small business originations from 2022 and 2023 to determine their initial compliance date, or instead use their originations from 2023 and 2024.