Today, 19 Democratic Senators sent a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) expressing their disapproval of the agency’s proposed rule to reduce Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reporting. This comes on the heels of a similar letter sent on June 11 by 63 House Democrats.
Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (www.ncrc.org), made the following statement:
“We applaud Senate and House Democrats’ efforts to protect HMDA data reporting by submitting letters in opposition to the CFPB’s proposed rule changes. This data is essential to track the performance of mortgage lenders. It also serves as an early detection system of risky practices for federal regulators, local governments and advocacy groups like NCRC.
“The CFPB’s proposed changes won’t protect consumers or the financial system, and they won’t make business easier for small lenders because lenders already set up systems to report the data that the government now seems intent to help them hide. The only beneficiaries of these changes will be bad actors, a subset of smaller lenders that are doing the greatest disservice to their communities or creating risk for consumers and the financial system.
“With an ever-growing list of opposers, we join in urging the CFPB to repeal its proposed rule change. NCRC organized a letter signed by over 150 community-based organizations that detailed how the proposed rule would impair fair lending enforcement and would make it difficult to determine if lenders were meeting housing needs in thousands of lower-income and rural communities across the country. HMDA’s statutory purposes include determining whether lenders are meeting housing needs. The CFPB’s proposal endangers the satisfaction of HMDA’s statutory purposes.”
To see the Senate letter, click here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019.06.12%20-%20CFPB%20HMDA.pdf
To see the House letter, click here: https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=403894
In addition to the House and Senate, the New York Attorney General sent in a letter describing how the proposal will reduce their ability to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
