The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shed a little more light on what compliance with its controversial 2015 updates to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule looks like in a training session last week.
With 2017 more than halfway over, the industry’s deadline to become compliant with the 2015 updates is coming up quick, as most of the updated requirements take effect in January 2018.
The industry, so far, hasn’t wasted any time and has been on high alert to come into compliance, even going so far as to say that HMDA is replacing TRID (the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule) as the most dreaded mortgage acronym.
Now with the deadline not too far off, the bureau provided the mortgage industry with a first look at the portal to be used for the reporting of, and public access to, data under HMDA, Richard J. Andreano, Jr. explained in a blog in the Consumer Finance Monitor.
Andreano stated that reporting institutions will use the portal to submit data commencing with the submission of calendar year 2017 data by March 1, 2018.
The blog covered a recent presentation by Michael Byrne, a project director in the technology division with the CFPB.
The presentation addressed only the data submission aspects of the portal, and not the ability to access HMDA data that is publicly available, Andreano said.
From the blog:
Once the portal becomes live, persons responsible for HMDA reporting at their institution will need to create an account to be able to access the portal. The portal includes a series of steps to validate the accuracy and correct formatting of the data in a LAR before it can actually be submitted. The CFPB has a File Format Verification Tool that institutions can use to test whether their 2017 HMDA data is formatted correctly.
The blog noted that to start, the portal will be available only for the submission of the current HMDA data fields, which must be collected for 2017 activity and reported in 2018.
HMDA, which was originally enacted in 1975, requires many lenders to report information about the home loans for which they receive applications or that they originate or purchase. The public and regulators can use the information to monitor whether financial institutions are serving the housing needs of their communities, to assist in distributing public-sector investment so as to attract private investment to areas where it is needed, and to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns.
The HMDA updates are supposed to improve the quality and type of HMDA data.
