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Warren Traiger Quoted in American Banker Article, "Final HMDA Rule Still Too Costly Despite Changes, Industry Warns"

Warren Traiger was quoted in Rachel Witkowski's American Banker article, "Final HMDA Rule Still Too Costly Despite Changes, Industry Warns," on October 15, 2015. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau backed off some of its initial plans in its final rule requiring lenders to collect more data from mortgage borrowers, but industry representatives warned the agency had not gone far enough.

The rule released Thursday adds 25 new data points and modifies 14 others in addition to the existing 9 data fields that lenders were already required to report under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Though the agency dropped some datasets it initially proposed to collect last year, some lenders said the final rule was still going to be overly burdensome, particularly for smaller institutions.

The CFPB noted in the press release announcing the final rule that it is "looking at ways to improve public access to HMDA data that has been modified to protect applicant and borrower privacy."

The CFPB has more time to vet privacy concerns now that it’s given the industry until January 2018 to begin gathering the data, which would then be reported to regulators the following year, by March 1, 2019.

"The bureau has given an additional year which should be a great help in allowing the industry to prepare to collect the data, as well as a little bit of a wind-up to analyzing the data," said Warren Traiger, counsel in the New York office of Buckley Sandler. "Perhaps the bureau feels that another year gives them an opportunity to deal with a very significant question that pits privacy proponents against proponents of public disclosure of fair lending data."

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