Changes in home mortgage data reporting thresholds for credit unions – particularly those institutions now excluded from sharing data – under amended final rules implementing the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) are outlined in a “regulatory alert” issued by the federal credit union regulator Friday.
In its Regulatory Alert 20-RA-04, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) focuses on of the amended, final HMDA rules, issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) May 12. Under the amended rule, the threshold for collecting and reporting data about closed-end mortgage loans increases from 25 to 100, effective July 1, 2020. The final rule also increases the threshold for collecting and reporting data about open-end lines of credit, from 100 to 200, effective Jan. 1, 2022 (when the current temporary threshold of 500 open-end lines of credit expires).
NCUA noted that the final rule does not change the 2020 institutional asset size threshold. Credit unions with total assets less than or equal to $47 million as of Dec. 31, 2019, are not subject to HMDA in 2020.
The credit union regulator’s notice focused on three areas of the amended HMDA reporting rules: collecting, recording and reporting. More specifically:
- Collecting: Credit unions newly excluded from HMDA data reporting can stop collecting HMDA data on their closed-end mortgage loans beginning July 1, 2020. “Please note that other laws or regulations may require credit unions to collect data on home loan activity,” the agency said. “For example, Regulation B requires lenders to collect information regarding an applicant’s ethnicity, race, sex, marital status, and age when credit sought is primarily for the purchase or refinancing of a dwelling that is, or will be, the applicant’s principal residence and will secure the credit.”
- Recording: Newly excluded credit unions, the agency said, must still record closed-end data for the first quarter of 2020 on a loan/application register no more than 30 calendar days after the end of the first quarter. “However, they will not be required to record closed-end data for the second quarter of 2020 because the deadline for recording that data is after July 1, 2020,” NCUA said.
- Reporting: Because newly excluded credit unions collecting HMDA data in 2020 would not otherwise report this data until early 2021, the final rule relieves these credit unions of the obligation to report by March 1, 2021, data collected in 2020 on closed-end mortgage loans (including data collected in 2020 before July 1, 2020), NCUA said. “Under the final rule, a newly excluded credit union may voluntarily report HMDA data on closed-end mortgage loans in 2021 as long as the credit union reports data for the full calendar year 2020,” the agency pointed out.
On the open-end threshold (which effectively drops from 500 to 200 open-end lines of credit as of Jan. 1, 2022), the agency alert noted that, beginning in 2022, credit unions that originated at least 200 open-end lines of credit in each of the two preceding calendar years must collect and record HMDA data on their open-end lines of credit and report that data by March 1 of the following calendar year.
“Credit unions should read the provisions of the final rule and Regulation C to determine the potential effects on their operations,” NCUA advised. “The current version of Regulation C will not be updated until the effective dates of the amendments.”