Hearings on HMDA - Focus on Fair Lending
Written by Steve Van Beek
On Friday, the Federal Reserve announced it will be holding four public hearings on potential revisions to Regulation C (HMDA):
"The hearings will serve three objectives. First, the Board will gather information to evaluate whether the 2002 revisions to Regulation C, which required lenders to report mortgage pricing data, helped provide useful and accurate information about the mortgage market. Second, the hearings will provide information that will help the Board assess the need for additional data and other improvements. Finally, the hearings will help identify emerging issues in the mortgage market that may warrant additional research.The hearings will take place at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on July 15, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on August 5, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on September 16, and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. on September 24."
Anthony has been emphasizing how regulators respond when they are criticized for their actions (or inactions) and this might be another example. Â Here is a snippet of an article that I wrote for The Federal Credit Union on how regulators will Focus on Fair Lending:
"GAO report on fair lendingIn July 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm for Congress, released a report on the limitations and challenges facing bank and credit union regulators in the area of examining fair lending violations. The GAO report recommended that the information collected by regulators be expanded to include the loan underwriting data (the borrowerâÂÂs credit score, loan-to-value ratio, and debt-to-income ratio)."
The highlights to that GAO report can be found here. Â The full report is here. Â The GAO is reporting to Congress - but the Federal Reserve also got the memo and is looking to expand the data and information financial institutions must report with their HMDA data. Â