On December 21, 2018, the CFPB issued final policy guidance concerning data collected under the HMDA rule that will be made publicly available in 2019. For background purposes, the CFPB comprehensively revised HMDA data collection/reporting requirements in 2015. These new data collection requirements became effective in 2018, with a reporting deadline of March 2019. The CFPB issued a proposed policy in September 2017 and, after reviewing public comments, the CFPB agreed to modify certain public data disclosures to address concerns regarding consumers’ privacy.

The following HMDA data collected in 2018 will be excluded from public disclosure under the final policy: (i) the Universal Loan Identifier or ULI; (ii) the application and action taken dates; (iii) the property address; (iv) the applicants’ credit scores; (v) the mortgage originator’s NMLS identifier; and (vi) the results generated by the automated underwriting system. The CFPB will also exclude free-form text fields which report data such as the applicant’s race or ethnicity. The Bureau further announced that it will publish data for (i) the applicants’ ages; (ii) the loan amount; and (iii) the number of units in the dwelling as ranges rather than specific values.

The CFPB stated that it intends to initiate in a separate notice-and-comment rulemaking in 2019 to incorporate any modifications of HMDA data into the text of Regulation C and will use the rulemaking to consider what HMDA data will be disclosed in future years. The CFPB’s announcement and the final policy are available here.

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