A series of three “tech sprints” – one held this October, and two more slated for March 2021 – will focus on how to improve consumer disclosures, preparing files for Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) submissions, and integrating third-party vendor software into the HMDA platform, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced Monday.
These first tech sprints slated by the bureau “will bring together financial institutions, technologists, software vendors, community groups and regulators to find technology solutions to shared operational challenges,” according to a release.
The Oct. 5-9 tech sprint will task participants with finding solutions for improving consumer disclosures. Noting that many federal consumer financial laws were written prior to the digital age, the bureau said participants of this sprint will be asked to design innovative electronic methods for informing consumers about adverse actions, for example, in credit reporting.
The 2021 tech sprints, scheduled for March, will focus on the HMDA platform and submission process. Noting the challenges faced by lenders – particularly smaller ones with limited staff and more manual processes – of submitting HMDA data from various in-house data collection systems error-free, the bureau said one of the sprints will focus on creating a tool for merging two or more files into one HMDA data-submission file. The second sprint, it said, will seek to better integrate third-party vendor software into the HMDA platform by developing application programming interfaces (APIs). The bureau noted that nearly all financial institutions submit loan data via third-party vendors.
CFPB Announces Tech Sprints To Empower Consumers, Reduce Regulatory Burden