CRA Public File and HMDA Disclosure Statement

Issue/Inquiry

The Bank will be having a FDIC Compliance and CRA review. In the CRA Public File, is it required to include a notice that the HMDA Disclosure Statement may be obtained on the CFPB’s Website? The Bank currently has the HMDA disclosure statements from the FFIEC for the previous two calendar years in the file.

Response Summary

The Bank should include in its CRA Public File a written notice that its HMDA Disclosure Statement may be obtained on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) website. It should also retain on file the HMDA Disclosure Statements prepared by the FFIEC for the 2016 and 2017 calendar years.

Response Detail

Prior to January 1, 2018, Regulation BB required a financial institution to comply with the following:

A bank required to report home mortgage loan data pursuant to part 1003 of this chapter shall include in its public file a copy of the HMDA Disclosure Statement provided by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council pertaining to the bank for each of the prior two calendar years. In addition, a bank that elected to have the Board consider the mortgage lending of an affiliate for any of these years shall include in its public file the affiliate’s HMDA Disclosure Statement for those years. The bank shall place the statement(s) in the public file within three business days after its receipt.

However, effective January 1, 2018, this paragraph was revised as follows:

A bank required to report home mortgage loan data pursuant part 1003 of this title shall include in its public file a written notice that the institution’s HMDA Disclosure Statement may be obtained on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (Bureau’s) website at www.consumerfinance.gov/hmda. In addition, a bank that elected to have the Board consider the mortgage lending of an affiliate shall include in its public file the name of the affiliate and a written notice that the affiliate’s HMDA Disclosure Statement may be obtained at the Bureau’s website. The bank shall place the written notice(s) in the public file within three business days after receiving notification from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council of the availability of the disclosure statement(s). 12 CFR §228.43(b)(2).

When the final rule incorporating this change was published, the federal regulatory agencies offered the following comment:

Effective January 1, 2018, Regulation C will no longer require financial institutions to provide this HMDA disclosure statement directly to the public. Instead, Regulation C will only require financial institutions to provide a notice that clearly conveys to the public that they can obtain a copy of the financial institution’s disclosure statement on the Bureau’s Web site. 12 CFR 1003.5(b). As a result, the Agencies proposed to amend the CRA public file content requirements under 12 CFR __.43(b)(2) for consistency and to reduce burden. Specifically, the Agencies proposed that institutions that are required to report HMDA data would only maintain the notice required under section 1003.5(b) of Regulation C in their CRA public file, rather than a copy of the HMDA disclosure statement. Nevertheless, a financial institution must maintain in its public file the HMDA disclosure statements required by the CRA regulations that are not available on the Bureau’s Web site and, therefore, should not remove HMDA disclosure statements from their CRA public files if that information is not available on the Bureau’s Web site. 82 Federal Register 55734, 55736.

This means that the Bank must include in its public file a written notice that the institution’s HMDA Disclosure Statement may be obtained on the CFPB’s website. In addition, it must retain in its public file any HMDA disclosure statements that are not available on the CFPB’s website.

We understand that the CFPB has HMDA data available on its website beginning with the 2017 data, so that it does not offer copies of previous years’ disclosure statements, as prepared by the FFIEC. Consequently, the Bank should also maintain in the public file copies of the previous two calendar year disclosure statements (i.e., 2016 and 2017) for data reported during or before 2017.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2018 at 6:00 am.