InfoBytes Blog
CFPB Report Reviews 2015 Fair Lending Activities and Notes Continuing Priorities
On April 29, the CFPB released its fourth annual report to Congress on fair lending activities. The report recaps the CFPB’s 2015 supervisory and enforcement efforts around fair lending and identifies ongoing priorities in the areas of: (i) mortgage lending, noting a continuing focus on HMDA data integrity and fair lending risks related to redlining, underwriting, and pricing; (ii) indirect auto lending, noting targeted ECOA reviews in examinations; (iii) credit cards, focusing “on the quality of fair lending compliance management systems and on fair lending risks in underwriting, line assignment, and servicing”; and (iv) other product areas including small-business lending, focusing on risks in underwriting, pricing, and redlining, and offering that “current and future small business lending supervisory activity will help expand and enhance the Bureau’s knowledge in this area, including the credit process; existing data collection processes; and the nature, extent, and management of fair lending risk.” The report highlights that “supervisory work on mortgage servicing has included use of the ECOA Baseline Review Modules … to identify potential fair lending risk in mortgage servicing and inform [its] prioritization of mortgage servicers.” In addition to recaps of its 2015 rulemaking, published guidance and efforts at interagency cooperation (including its MOU and sharing of customer complaints with HUD), the report also indicates that the CFPB had a number of authorized enforcement actions in settlement negotiations or pending investigations at year end in areas including mortgage lending, indirect auto lending, and credit cards.