The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is extending the comment period for its proposal to change what data is collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.
The comment period will be extended 90 days to Oct. 15, the CFPB said, after three trade groups and 18 consumer advocacy organizations asked for more time to review the 2018 HMDA data, which is expected to be released in late summer, in order to comment on the bureau's plans.
The CFPB is soliciting comments on certain HMDA data points as part of its 2015 HMDA final rule. The agency also wants comments related to the requirement that financial institutions report certain business or commercial transactions under Regulation C.
In May, the CFPB said was looking to permanently raise the HMDA reporting threshold for closed-end mortgage loans to either 50 or 100 loans in the previous two years, up from the current 25-loan threshold.
For open-end lines of credit, the CFPB is proposing to extend the current temporary coverage threshold of 500 open-end lines of credit for another two years. After that, the threshold would be set permanently at 200 open-end lines of credit.
The Dodd-Frank Act mandated 14 additional data fields for HMDA data collection, on top of the nine that previously existed. The statute also gave the CFPB the discretion to add additional data fields and former CFPB Director Richard Cordray used that authority to establish 25 additional data points.
Last year, passage of a regulatory relief law exempted an estimated 85% of all banks from reporting the expanded HMDA data points introduced for the 2018 reporting year. The banking industry lobbied heavily for the changes, particularly for an exemption from disclosure of all points and fees when a home loan is originated.
HMDA data has been collected since 1975 and regulators use the data to enforce fair lending and anti-discrimination laws.
