On June 28, 2019, the CFPB released their annual report on fair lending. Coming just seven months after the last annual report to congress (12/4/18), this annual report to Congress describes the Bureau’s fair lending activities in innovation, outreach, prioritization, guidance and rulemaking, supervision, and enforcement for calendar year 2018. This is the first report released under new CFPB Director, Kathleen Kraninger.
In the current report, the CFPB explains how their focus in 2018 remained on promoting fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory access to credit in mortgage lending, continuing fair lending supervision of servicing and small business lending, and embarking on new efforts to encourage innovation in expanding credit access.
In their release, the CFPB provided a number of highlights of the 2017 report, including:
Convened a symposium, Building a Bridge to Credit Visibility, bringing together diverse stakeholders to expand access to credit to the millions of consumers who currently lack access
Monitored lenders and servicers for compliance with the anti-discrimination laws under the Bureau’s jurisdiction
Continued to monitor its first “no-action” letter which was issued in 2017 to a company that uses alternative, or non-traditional, data to make credit and pricing decisions to enable people with limited credit history, among others, to obtain credit or obtain credit on better terms
Issued new guidance to facilitate implementation of HMDA
Communicated information on fair lending to the public at large, including industry, consumer and civil rights group, and other stakeholders, through blog posts, Supervisory Highlights reports, and serving as presenters and panelists at a number of events
The CFPB release can be found here.
The CFPB annual report to Congress can be found here.
NOTE: The 2018 CFPB fair lending report to Congress will be included in our 2Q 2019 Regulatory Update program, which will be released in July of 2019, covering all of the regulatory changes that a compliance professional needs to be aware of from the activity that occurred during the 2nd Q of 2019.
