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The CFPB Thursday, in a NAFCU-supported move, extended the current temporary threshold of 500 for reporting open-end lines of credit under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The two-year extension seeks to provide relief to smaller institutions.

In the rule, the bureau also clarified partial exemptions from certain HMDA requirements under the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

The rule finalizes certain aspects of the bureau's proposal to raise HMDA's transactional and institutional reporting thresholds. Earlier this year, NAFCU Senior Counsel for Research and Policy Andrew Morris shared the association's support for the proposed increases and outlined specific suggestions that NAFCU would like to see implemented, including the incorporation of the 2018 HMDA Rule into Regulation C.

"HMDA reporting for credit unions has a disproportionate cost impact because these institutions often lack the scale, sophistication, and bargaining power to easily implement fully-automated reporting systems," wrote Morris.

In order to allow stakeholders time to review recently-released HMDA-required data on mortgage lending transactions from more than 5,000 U.S. financial institutions, the bureau reopened the proposal's comment period until Oct. 15.

The bureau indicated that it intends to issue a separate final rule in 2020 addressing the previously proposed alternatives that would permanently raise the closed-end thresholds to either 50 or 100 closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years. If finalized, credit unions with originations below the thresholds would be relieved of some or all of their HMDA data reporting requirements.

Prior to the proposed rulemaking, NAFCU requested more guidance on HMDA to ensure credit unions are compliant, and met with CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger to discuss credit unions' concerns and priorities. NAFCU will further review the final rule and update credit unions via a Final Regulation.