Guidence Document

Federal Register / Vol. 84, No. 21 / Thursday, January 31, 2019 / Notices
lives affect consumers’ ability to
successfully obtain and use card credit?

BUREAU OF CONSUMER FINANCIAL
PROTECTION

(e) The Safety and Soundness of Credit
Card Issuers

[Docket No. CFPB–2017–0025]

How is the credit cycle evolving?
What, if any, safety and soundness risks
are present or growing in this market,
and which entities are
disproportionately affected by these
risks? How, if at all, do these safety and
soundness risks to entities relate to
long-term indebtedness on the part of
some consumers, or changes in
consumers’ ability to manage their
debts? Has the impact of the CARD Act
on safety and soundness changed over
the past two years?
(f) The Use of Risk-Based Pricing for
Consumer Credit Cards
How has the use of risk-based pricing
for consumer credit cards changed since
the Bureau reported on the credit card
market in 2017? What has driven those
changes or lack of changes? Has the
impact of the CARD Act on risk-based
pricing changed over the past two years?
How have CARD Act provisions
relating to risk-based pricing impacted
(positively or negatively) the evolution
of practices in this market?
(g) Consumer Credit Card Product
Innovation

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How has credit card product
innovation changed since the Bureau
reported on the credit card market in
2017? What has driven those changes or
lack of changes? Has the impact of the
CARD Act on product innovation
changed over the past two years?
How have broader innovations in
finance, such as (but not limited to) new
products and entrants, evolving digital
tools, greater availability of and new
applications for consumer data, and
new technological tools (like machine
learning), impacted the consumer credit
card market, either directly or
indirectly? In what ways do CARD Act
provisions encourage or discourage
innovation? In what ways do
innovations increase or decrease the
impact of certain CARD Act provisions,
or change the nature of those impacts?
Dated: December 21, 2018.
Kathleen Kraninger,
Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial
Protection.
[FR Doc. 2019–00487 Filed 1–30–19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4810–AM–P

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Disclosure of Loan-Level HMDA Data
Bureau of Consumer Financial
Protection.
ACTION: Final policy guidance.
AGENCY:

The Bureau of Consumer
Financial Protection (Bureau) is issuing
final policy guidance describing
modifications that the Bureau intends to
apply to the loan-level data that
financial institutions report under the
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA)
and Regulation C before the data is
disclosed to the public. This final policy
guidance applies to HMDA data
compiled by financial institutions in or
after 2018 and made available to the
public by the Bureau beginning in 2019.
DATES: The Bureau released this final
policy guidance on its website on
December 21, 2018.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Benjamin Cady and David Jacobs,
Counsels; Laura Stack, Senior Counsel,
Office of Regulations, at 202–435–7700
or https://
reginquiries.consumerfinance.gov/. If
you require this document in an
alternative electronic format, please
contact CFPB_Accessibility@cfpb.gov.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
SUMMARY:

I. Summary
HMDA requires certain financial
institutions to collect, report, and
disclose data about their mortgage
lending activity. HMDA is implemented
by Regulation C, 12 CFR part 1003. In
2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act
(Dodd-Frank Act) amended HMDA and
transferred HMDA rulemaking authority
and other functions from the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve
System (Board) to the Bureau. Among
other changes, the Dodd-Frank Act
expanded the scope of information
relating to mortgage applications and
loans that must be collected, reported,
and disclosed under HMDA and
authorized the Bureau to require by rule
financial institutions to collect, report,
and disclose additional information. In
2015, the Bureau published a final rule
amending Regulation C (2015 HMDA
Final Rule) to implement the DoddFrank Act amendments to HMDA and
make other changes, including adding a
number of new data points. Most
provisions of the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule took effect on January 1, 2018, and
apply to data financial institutions
collect beginning in 2018 and report

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beginning in 2019. With respect to the
public disclosure of HMDA data, the
Bureau interpreted HMDA, as amended
by the Dodd-Frank Act, to require that
the Bureau use a balancing test to
determine whether and how HMDA
data should be modified prior to its
disclosure to protect applicant and
borrower privacy while also fulfilling
HMDA’s public disclosure purposes. On
September 25, 2017, the Bureau
published proposed policy guidance
that described the Bureau’s balancing
test and how the Bureau proposed to
apply it to the loan-level HMDA data
made available to the public.1
After considering the comments the
Bureau received on the proposal, the
Bureau is publishing this final policy
guidance describing the loan-level
HMDA data it intends to make available
to the public, including modifications to
be applied to the data. The Bureau
intends to make these modifications to
data financial institutions collected in
2018 when the Bureau discloses that
data in 2019. The Bureau is making
these determinations based upon the
information currently available to it,
including the comments received on the
proposal, with respect to the risks and
benefits associated with the disclosure
of loan-level HMDA data. The Bureau
intends to commence a rulemaking in
the spring of 2019 that will enable it to
identify more definitively modifications
to the data that the Bureau determines
to be appropriate under the balancing
test and incorporate these modifications
into a legislative rule. The rulemaking
will reconsider the determinations
reflected in this final policy guidance
based upon the Bureau’s experience
administering the final policy guidance
in 2019 and on a new rulemaking
record, including data concerning the
privacy risks posed by the disclosure of
the HMDA data and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
In developing this final policy
guidance, the Bureau consulted with the
prudential regulators (the Board, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC), the National Credit Union
Administration (NCUA), and the Office
of the Comptroller of the Currency
(OCC)); the Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD); and the
Federal Housing Finance Agency
(FHFA).
For the reasons described below and
in the proposed policy guidance,2 the
Bureau is modifying its proposed policy
guidance to change the proposed
1 Disclosure of Loan-Level HMDA Data, 82 FR
44586 (Sept. 25, 2017) (hereinafter Proposed Policy
Guidance).
2 See id. at 44596–44610.

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treatment of the following data fields:
(1) The ratio of the applicant’s or
borrower’s total monthly debt to the
total monthly income relied on in
making the credit decision; (2) the
number of individual dwelling units
related to the property securing the
covered loan or, in the case of an
application, proposed to secure the
covered loan; and (3) the number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan, that are
income-restricted pursuant to Federal,
State, or local affordable housing
programs.
Pursuant to this final policy guidance,
the Bureau intends to disclose loanlevel HMDA data reported under
Regulation C with the following
modifications to the data: First, the
Bureau intends to modify the public
loan-level HMDA data to exclude: (1)
The universal loan identifier or nonuniversal loan identifier; (2) the date the
application was received or the date
shown on the application form; (3) the
date of action taken by the financial
institution on a covered loan or
application; (4) the address of the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan; (5) the credit
score or scores relied on in making the
credit decision; (6) the unique identifier
assigned by the Nationwide Mortgage
Licensing System and Registry for the
mortgage loan originator; and (7) the
result generated by the automated
underwriting system used by the
financial institution to evaluate the
application. The Bureau also intends to
exclude free-form text fields used to
report the following data: (1) Applicant
or borrower race; (2) applicant or
borrower ethnicity; (3) the name and
version of the credit scoring model
used; (4) the principal reason or reasons
the financial institution denied the
application, if applicable; and (5) the
automated underwriting system name.
Second, the Bureau intends to modify
the public loan-level HMDA data to
reduce the precision of most of the
values reported for the following data
fields. With respect to the amount of the
loan or the amount applied for, the
Bureau intends to disclose the midpoint
for the $10,000 interval into which the
reported value falls. The Bureau also
intends to indicate whether the reported
value exceeds the applicable dollar
amount limitation on the original
principal obligation in effect at the time
of application or origination, as
provided under 12 U.S.C. 1717(b)(2) and
12 U.S.C. 1454(a)(2). With respect to the
age of an applicant or borrower, the

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Bureau intends to bin reported values
into the following ranges: 25 to 34; 35
to 44; 45 to 54; 55 to 64; and 65 to 74;
bottom-code reported values under 25;
top-code reported values over 74; and
indicate whether the reported value is
62 or higher.3 With respect to the ratio
of the applicant’s or borrower’s total
monthly debt to the total monthly
income relied on in making the credit
decision, the Bureau intends to disclose
without modification reported values
greater than or equal to 36 percent and
less than 50 percent. The Bureau also
intends to bin reported values into the
following ranges: 20 percent to less than
30 percent; 30 percent to less than 36
percent; and 50 percent to less than 60
percent; bottom-code reported values
under 20 percent; and top-code reported
values of 60 percent or higher. With
respect to the value of the property
securing the covered loan or, in the case
of an application, proposed to secure
the covered loan, the Bureau intends to
disclose the midpoint for the $10,000
interval into which the reported value
falls. With respect to the number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan, the Bureau
intends to bin reported values into the
following ranges: 5 to 24; 25 to 49; 50
to 99; 100 to 149; and 150 and over. And
with respect to the number of individual
dwelling units related to the property
securing the covered loan or, in the case
of an application, proposed to secure
the covered loan, that are incomerestricted pursuant to Federal, State, or
local affordable housing programs, the
Bureau intends to disclose reported
values as a percentage, rounded to the
nearest whole number, of the value
reported for the total number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property securing the covered loan.
This final policy guidance is exempt
from notice and comment rulemaking
requirements under the Administrative
Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 553(b),
and is non-binding. As previously
noted, the Bureau believes that it is
beneficial to commence a separate
notice and comment legislative
rulemaking under the APA to consider
and adopt a more definitive approach to
disclosing HMDA data to the public in
future years. The Bureau will commence
such a rulemaking in May 2019.
3 Binning, sometimes known as recoding or
interval recoding, allows data to be shown clustered
into ranges rather than as precise values. Top- and
bottom-coding mask any value that is above or
below a certain threshold.

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II. Background
A. HMDA’s Purposes and the Public
Disclosure of HMDA Data
HMDA requires certain financial
institutions to collect, report, and
disclose data about their mortgage
lending activity. The home mortgage
market is the country’s largest market
for consumer financial products and
services, with $10 trillion in mortgage
debt outstanding.4 Homeownership is a
critical source of wealth-building for
families and communities. As of 2016,
48 million consumers had a mortgage,
representing 64 percent of all owneroccupied homes.5
HMDA is implemented by Regulation
C, 12 CFR part 1003. HMDA identifies
its purposes as providing the public and
public officials with sufficient
information to enable them to determine
whether financial institutions are
serving the housing needs of the
communities in which they are located,
and to assist public officials in their
determination of the distribution of
public sector investments in a manner
designed to improve the private
investment environment.6 In 1989,
following amendments to HMDA, the
Board recognized a third HMDA
purpose of identifying possible
discriminatory lending patterns and
enforcing antidiscrimination statutes,
which now appears with HMDA’s other
purposes in Regulation C.7 Today,
HMDA data are the preeminent data
source that regulators, researchers,
economists, industry, and advocates use
to achieve HMDA’s purposes and to
analyze the mortgage market.
Public disclosure of HMDA data is
central to the achievement of HMDA’s
purposes. Since HMDA’s enactment in
1975, the data that financial institutions
are required to disclose under HMDA
and Regulation C have been expanded;
public access to HMDA data has
increased; and the formats in which
HMDA data have been disclosed have
evolved. As enacted and implemented
4 FRED Economic Data, ‘‘Mortgage Debt
Outstanding by Type of Property: One- to FourFamily Residences (MDOTP1T4FR),’’ Fed. Res.
Bank of St. Louis, Bd. of Govs. of the Fed. Res. Sys.,
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDOTP1T4FR (last
updated Sept. 24, 2018).
5 U.S. Census Bureau, ‘‘Selected Housing
Characteristics: 2012–2016 American Community
Survey 5-Year Estimates,’’ https://
factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/16_
5YR/DP04/0100000US (last visited Dec. 3, 2018).
6 12 U.S.C. 2801(b).
7 See Home Mortgage Disclosure, 54 FR 51356,
51357 (Dec. 15, 1989) (recognizing the purpose of
identifying possible discriminatory lending patterns
and enforcing antidiscrimination statutes in light of
the 1989 amendments to HMDA, which mandated
the reporting of the race, sex, and income of loan
applicants).

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in Regulation C, HMDA required
covered financial institutions to make
available to the public at their home and
branch offices a ‘‘disclosure statement’’
reflecting aggregates of certain mortgage
loan data.8 In 1980, Congress amended
HMDA section 304 to require that the
Federal Financial Institutions
Examination Council (FFIEC)
implement a system to increase public
access to the data required to be
disclosed under the statute, including a
‘‘central depository of data’’ in each
metropolitan statistical area (MSA). The
1980 HMDA amendments also required
the FFIEC to compile annually, for each
MSA, aggregate data by census tract for
all financial institutions required to
disclose data under HMDA. The 1980
amendments further required the FFIEC
to produce tables indicating, for each
MSA, aggregate lending patterns for
various categories of census tracts
grouped according to location, age of
housing stock, income level, and racial
characteristics.9
In 1989, Congress amended HMDA to
require that financial institutions
collect, report, and disclose data
concerning the race, sex, and income of
applicants and borrowers, as well as
data on loan applications, in addition to
originations and purchases.10 In
implementing these amendments in
Regulation C, the Board required
financial institutions to report HMDA
data to Federal regulators on a loan-byloan and application-by-application
basis using the ‘‘loan/application
register’’ format.11 In 1990, the FFIEC
issued a notice announcing that it
would make all reported HMDA data
available to the public in a loan-level
format, after deleting three fields to
protect applicant and borrower privacy:
application or loan number, application
date, and action taken date.12 The FFIEC
stated that it believed public disclosure
of the reported loan-level HMDA data to
be ‘‘consistent with the congressional
intent to maximize the utilization of
lending data.’’ 13 The FFIEC first
8 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, Public
Law 94–200, section 304, 89 Stat. 1124, 1125–28
(Dec. 31, 1975); 12 CFR 203.5(a)(1) (effective June
28, 1976).
9 Housing and Community Development Act of
1980, Public Law 96–399, section 340, 94 Stat.
1614, 1657–59 (1980).
10 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and
Enforcement Act (FIRREA), Public Law 101–73,
section 1211, 103 Stat. 183, 524–26 (1989).
11 54 FR 51356, 51361 (Dec. 15, 1989).
12 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; Disclosure
Statements and Aggregate MSA Reports;
Availability of Data, 55 FR 27886, 27888 (July 6,
1990).
13 Id.

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disclosed the reported loan-level HMDA
data to the public in October 1991.
In 1992, Congress amended HMDA to
add section 304(j), which required that
each financial institution make available
to the public its ‘‘loan application
register information’’ for each year as
early as March 31 of the succeeding
year, as required under regulations
prescribed by the Board.14 The Board
implemented this amendment by
requiring that financial institutions
make their ‘‘modified’’ loan/application
registers available to the public after
deleting the same three fields deleted
from the loan-level HMDA data
disclosed by the FFIEC.15
B. The Dodd-Frank Act and
Amendments to HMDA and Regulation
C
In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act amended
HMDA and transferred HMDA
rulemaking authority and other
functions from the Board to the
Bureau.16 Among other changes, the
Dodd-Frank Act expanded the scope of
information relating to mortgage
applications and loans that must be
collected, reported, and disclosed under
HMDA and authorized the Bureau to
require by rule financial institutions to
collect, report, and disclose additional
information. The Dodd-Frank Act
amendments to HMDA also added new
section 304(h)(1)(E), which directs the
Bureau to develop regulations, in
consultation with the agencies
identified in section 304(h)(2),17 that
‘‘modify or require modification of
itemized information, for the purpose of
protecting the privacy interests of the
mortgage applicants or mortgagors, that
is or will be available to the public.’’
Section 304(h)(3)(B), also added by the
Dodd-Frank Act, directs the Bureau to
‘‘prescribe standards for any
modification under paragraph (1)(E) to
effectuate the purposes of [HMDA], in
light of the privacy interests of mortgage
applicants or mortgagors. Where
necessary to protect the privacy
interests of mortgage applicants or
mortgagors, the Bureau shall provide for
the disclosure of information . . . in
aggregate or other reasonably modified
14 Housing and Community Development Act,
Public Law 102–550, section 932, 106 Stat. 3672,
3889–91 (1992).
15 12 CFR 203.5(a)–(e) (effective Mar. 1, 1993).
16 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
Protection Act, Public Law 111–203, 124 Stat. 1376,
1980, 2035–38, 2097–2101 (2010).
17 These agencies are the prudential regulators—
the Board, the FDIC, the NCUA, and the OCC—and
HUD. Together with the Bureau, these agencies are
referred to herein as ‘‘the agencies.’’

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form, in order to effectuate the purposes
of [HMDA].’’ 18
On October 28, 2015, the Bureau
published the 2015 HMDA Final Rule to
implement the Dodd-Frank Act
amendments and make other changes,
including adding a number of new data
points.19 Most provisions of the 2015
HMDA Final Rule took effect on January
1, 2018, and apply to data financial
institutions collect beginning in 2018
and report beginning in 2019. The 2015
HMDA Final Rule addressed the public
disclosure of HMDA data in two ways.
First, the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
shifted public disclosure of HMDA data
entirely to the agencies. Beginning with
HMDA data compiled in 2017, financial
institutions were no longer required to
provide their modified loan/application
registers and disclosure statements
directly to the public. Instead, they were
required only to provide a notice
advising members of the public seeking
their data that the data may be obtained
on the Bureau’s website. In addition to
reducing burden on financial
institutions, this shift of responsibility
to the agencies eliminated risks to
financial institutions associated with
errors in preparing their modified loan/
application registers that could result in
the unintended disclosure of data. This
shift of responsibility also permitted the
Bureau to consider modifications to
protect applicant and borrower privacy
that preserve data utility but that may be
burdensome for financial institutions to
implement. Finally, this shift of
responsibility allowed for easier
adjustment of modifications as privacy
risks and potential uses of HMDA data
evolve.
Second, the Bureau interpreted
HMDA, as amended by the Dodd-Frank
Act, to require that the Bureau use a
balancing test to determine whether and
how HMDA data should be modified
prior to its disclosure to the public to
protect applicant and borrower privacy
while also fulfilling HMDA’s public
disclosure purposes. The Bureau
interpreted HMDA to require that public
HMDA data be modified when the
release of the unmodified data creates
risks to applicant and borrower privacy
18 Section 304(h)(3)(A) provides that a
modification under section 304(h)(1)(E) shall apply
to information concerning ‘‘(i) credit score data . . .
in a manner that is consistent with the purpose
described in paragraph (1)(E); and (ii) age or any
other category of data described in paragraph (5) or
(6) of subsection (b), as the Bureau determines to
be necessary to satisfy the purpose described in
paragraph (1)(E), and in a manner consistent with
that purpose.’’ 12 U.S.C. 2803(h)(3)(A).
19 Home Mortgage Disclosure (Regulation C), 80
FR 66128 (Oct. 28, 2015); see also Home Mortgage
Disclosure (Regulation C), 80 FR 69567 (Nov. 10,
2015) (making technical corrections).

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interests that are not justified by the
benefits of such release to the public in
light of HMDA’s statutory purposes.20
The 2015 HMDA Final Rule’s
interpretation of HMDA section
304(h)(1)(E) and 304(h)(3)(B) to require
a balancing test imposed binding
obligations on the Bureau to evaluate
the HMDA data, individually and in
combination, to assess whether and how
HMDA data should be modified prior to
its disclosure to the public to protect
applicant and borrower privacy while
also fulfilling HMDA’s public disclosure
purposes.
On September 25, 2017, the Bureau
published proposed policy guidance
that described the Bureau’s balancing
test and how the Bureau proposed to
apply it to the loan-level HMDA data
made available to the public beginning
in 2019, with respect to data compiled
by lenders in or after 2018.21
On May 24, 2018, the President
signed into law the Economic Growth,
Regulatory Relief, and Consumer
Protection Act (EGRRCPA), which
amended HMDA by adding partial
exemptions from HMDA’s data
collection and reporting requirements
for certain insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions.22
On September 7, 2018, the Bureau
published an interpretive and
procedural rule to implement and
clarify the EGRRCPA’s requirements
(2018 HMDA Final Rule).23 Among
other things, the Bureau clarified that
institutions covered by a partial
exemption have the option of reporting
exempt data points as long as they
report all data fields that the specific
data point comprises. The Bureau also
clarified which of the data points in
Regulation C are covered by the partial
exemptions.24 The partial exemptions
20 80

FR 66128, 66134 (Oct. 28, 2015).
82 FR 44586 (Sept. 25, 2017).
22 Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and
Consumer Protection Act, Public Law 115–174,
section 104(a), 132 Stat. 1296 (2018). The EGRRCPA
provided, among other things, that the requirements
of HMDA section 304(b)(5) and (6) (which requires
collection and reporting of certain data points and
provides the Bureau discretion to require additional
data points) shall not apply to closed-end mortgage
loans of an insured depository institution or
insured credit union if the institution originated
fewer than 500 closed-end mortgage loans in each
of the two preceding calendar years. The EGRRCPA
also included a similar exemption with respect to
open-end lines of credit.
23 Partial Exemptions from the Requirements of
the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Under the
Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer
Protection Act (Regulation C), 83 FR 45325 (Sept.
7, 2018).
24 The Bureau interpreted the partial exemption
to cover 26 of the 48 HMDA data points, including
12 data points that the Bureau added to Regulation
C in the 2015 HMDA Final Rule to implement data
points specifically identified in HMDA section

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apply beginning with the 2018 HMDA
data, which institutions must report to
the Bureau by March 1, 2019.
III. The Balancing Test
As noted above, in the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule, the Bureau interpreted
HMDA to require that public HMDA
data be modified when the disclosure of
the unmodified data creates risks to
applicant and borrower privacy interests
that are not justified by the benefits of
such disclosure to the public in light of
HMDA’s purposes. The Bureau included
in the proposed policy guidance a
detailed description of the balancing
test and its proposed application,
including the benefits of public
disclosure, the risks to applicant and
borrower privacy that may be created by
public disclosure, and the Bureau’s
approach to balancing these benefits
and risks, including through modifying
some of the data to be disclosed.
As described in more detail in the
proposal,25 under the balancing test, the
disclosure of the loan-level HMDA
dataset creates risks to applicant and
borrower privacy interests only where:
(1) At least one data field or a
combination of data fields substantially
facilitates the identification of an
applicant or borrower, and (2) at least
one data field or combination of data
fields discloses information about the
applicant or borrower that is not
otherwise public and may be harmful or
sensitive. At the individual data field
level, a field may create ‘‘reidentification risk’’ by substantially
facilitating the identification of an
applicant or borrower in the HMDA data
(for example, because it may be used to
match a HMDA record to an identified
record), or may create ‘‘risk of harm or
sensitivity’’ by disclosing information
about the applicant or borrower that is
not otherwise public and may be
harmful or sensitive.26
Where the public disclosure of the
unmodified loan-level HMDA dataset
would create risks to applicant and
borrower privacy, the balancing test
requires that the Bureau consider the
benefits of disclosure to HMDA’s
purposes and, where these benefits do
not justify the privacy risks the
disclosure would create, modify the
dataset to appropriately balance the
privacy risks and disclosure benefits.
An individual data field is a candidate
304(b)(5)(A) through (C) or (b)(6)(A) through (I), and
14 data points that were not found in Regulation C
prior to the Dodd-Frank Act and that the Bureau
required in the 2015 HMDA Final Rule pursuant to
its discretionary authority under HMDA sections
304(b)(5)(D) and (b)(6)(J).
25 See 82 FR 44586, 44590 (Sept. 25, 2017).
26 See id. at 44592–95.

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for potential modification under the
balancing test if its disclosure in
unmodified form would create a risk of
re-identification or a risk of harm or
sensitivity.
The Bureau explained in the proposal
that, with respect to the HMDA data that
financial institutions will report to the
agencies under the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule, it initially determined public
disclosure of the unmodified loan-level
dataset, as a whole, would create risks
to applicant and borrower privacy
interests. The Bureau stated that this
was due to the presence in the dataset
of individual data fields that the Bureau
believed would create re-identification
risk and the presence of individual data
fields that the Bureau believed are not
currently public and would create a risk
of harm or sensitivity. The Bureau thus
applied the balancing test to determine
whether and how it should modify the
HMDA data financial institutions must
collect and report under the 2015
HMDA Final Rule before it is disclosed
to the public. Based on its analysis, the
Bureau initially determined it would
have to modify the loan-level HMDA
data before it disclosed that data to the
public. The Bureau also stated it
initially determined the modifications
to the loan-level HMDA dataset
proposed in the proposed policy
guidance would reduce risks to
applicant and borrower privacy and
appropriately balance them with the
benefits of disclosure for HMDA’s
purposes.
For the reasons described below and
in the proposed policy guidance,27 the
Bureau is modifying its proposed policy
guidance to change the proposed
treatment of the following data fields:
(1) The ratio of the applicant’s or
borrower’s total monthly debt to the
total monthly income relied on in
making the credit decision (debt-toincome ratio); (2) the number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan (total units);
and (3) the number of individual
dwelling units related to the property
securing the covered loan or, in the case
of an application, proposed to secure
the covered loan, that are incomerestricted pursuant to Federal, State, or
local affordable housing programs
(affordable units). The Bureau
determines that public disclosure of the
unmodified loan-level dataset, as a
whole, would create risks to applicant
and borrower privacy interests and that
the loan-level HMDA data must be
modified before the data is disclosed to
27 See

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the public. The Bureau further
determines, based on the information
currently available to it, that the
modifications described in this final
policy guidance will reduce risks to
applicant and borrower privacy and
appropriately balance them with the
benefits of disclosure in light of
HMDA’s purposes. This final policy
guidance describes the data the Bureau
intends to disclose on each financial
institution’s modified loan/application
register as well as in the combined loanlevel data the agencies make available to
the public each year.28
IV. Comments Received and the
Bureau’s Responses
The Bureau received 26 comments on
the proposed policy guidance. These
included general comments on the
Bureau’s proposal; views on the
proposed treatment of particular data
fields; and comments on other topics.
The majority of the comments received
did not address how the Bureau should
treat specific data fields, and many
comments opposing or expressing
concern with the Bureau’s proposal did
not provide any evidence or analysis in
support of their positions.
A. General Comments Concerning the
Application of the Balancing Test to
Loan-Level HMDA Data
Comments Received

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Several industry commenters
generally stated that the Bureau’s
proposal did not sufficiently address the
privacy risks posed by the disclosure of
HMDA data, but many of these
commenters offered little evidence or
analysis to support their views or
specific suggestions to address their
concerns. A few industry commenters
stated that the HMDA data the Bureau
proposed to disclose would be highly
re-identifiable. They also stated that the
new data fields required under the 2015
HMDA Final Rule increased this reidentification risk compared to the data
publicly disclosed under the disclosure
regime adopted by the Board in
implementing the 1992 amendments to
HMDA (the Board’s disclosure
28 As described below in part IV.B and C, the
Bureau will not include on the modified loan/
application registers (1) an indication of whether
the reported loan amount exceeds the applicable
dollar amount limitation on the original principal
obligation in effect at the time of application or
origination as provided under 12 U.S.C. 1717(b)(2)
and 12 U.S.C. 1454(a)(2) or (2) information about
the MSA or Metropolitan Division in which the
property securing or proposed to secure the loan is
located. This information will be included in the
annual loan-level disclosure of all reported HMDA
data combined.

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regime).29 A group of industry
commenters stated that over 80 percent
of loans publicly disclosed under the
Board’s disclosure regime could be reidentified and that the addition of the
new data fields increases the possibility
of re-identification to ‘‘virtually
100%.’’ 30 These commenters also
suggested that the amount of HMDA
data the Bureau proposed to disclose
would create incentives to re-identify
the data. Several industry commenters
stated that technological advances
increase the ease with which public
HMDA data can be re-identified. One
industry commenter stated that the
Bureau had underestimated
adversaries’ 31 motives to re-identify the
HMDA data and that the Bureau’s
proposal downplayed the risk that an
adversary with personal knowledge of
an applicant or borrower would reidentify the applicant or borrower in the
HMDA data.
A few industry commenters also
expressed general concern that, if the
HMDA data were re-identified, the data
could be used to target what one
described as ‘‘predatory’’ marketing to
applicants and borrowers and to commit
financial fraud and identity theft. Two
industry commenters suggested that
these risks were posed by the data
disclosed under the Board’s disclosure
regime but that the Bureau’s proposed
disclosure of the new data fields
required by the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
increased these risks. One industry
commenter stated that data the Bureau
29 12 CFR 203.5(c) (effective Mar. 1, 1993)
(identifying the data a financial institution must
delete from its modified loan/application register
prior to making it available to the public).
30 These commenters cited a 2017 research paper
in support of their statement that attaching a
borrower’s name and address to a HMDA record can
be achieved in over 80 percent of cases. See
Anthony Yezer, ‘‘Personal Privacy of HMDA in a
World of Big Data,’’ at 4 (Geo. Wash. U., Inst. for
Int’l Econ. Policy, Working Paper No. IIEP–WP–
2017–21, 2017). In this paper, the author states that,
in a particular census tract that he identified as
presenting low re-identification risk compared to
others in the same county, he was able to re-identify
72 percent of borrowers with loans by the same
lender by matching the 2014 public HMDA data to
public records. Id. at 14–16. He also describes
several projects in which academic and government
researchers matched HMDA data to other data
sources—some to private datasets, others to public
records—and achieved up to a 75 percent match
rate. Id. at 11–14. It is unclear which research
supports the author’s claim that re-identification of
HMDA data disclosed under the Board’s disclosure
regime ‘‘can be achieved in over 80% of cases.’’ Id.
at 3.
31 The Bureau used the term ‘‘adversary’’ in the
proposed policy guidance to refer to persons that
may attempt to re-identify the HMDA data. See, e.g.,
Nat’l Inst. of Standards & Tech., ‘‘De-Identification
of Personal Information (2015),’’ available at http://
nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2015/NIST.IR.8053.pdf
(using ‘‘adversary’’ to refer to an entity attempting
to re-identify data).

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proposed to disclose could be used for
social engineering attacks, such as an
adversary posing as a borrower’s lender.
The commenter also stated that
disclosure could undermine lenders’
use of fraud detection measures such as
authentication questions that rely on a
customer’s personal knowledge of her
financial information. The commenter
also stated that data the Bureau
proposed to disclose could be used to
identify a vacation home for purposes of
theft or adverse possession. A group of
industry commenters stated that data
the Bureau proposed to disclose could
be used by an adversary to target older
borrowers in particular, and also would
allow the public to form a very accurate
estimate of consumers’
creditworthiness. A few industry
commenters expressed general concern
that the Bureau proposed to disclose
data consumers would consider
sensitive or would like or expect to
remain private. One industry
commenter suggested that lenders
would be subject to ‘‘increased
litigation’’ if HMDA data disclosed by
the Bureau were used for criminal
purposes.
With respect to disclosure benefits, a
few industry commenters stated that
public disclosure of the HMDA data,
and in particular the new data required
to be reported under the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule, would not further HMDA’s
purposes. One industry commenter
suggested that regulator access to
HMDA data alone would be sufficient to
accomplish HMDA’s goals. This
commenter and another industry
commenter also stated that the data
disclosed to the public under the
Board’s disclosure regime are sufficient
to allow the public to achieve HMDA’s
goals. Another industry commenter
suggested that the Bureau should
publicly disclose limited data at first,
and then later determine whether the
information disclosed is sufficient to
allow the public to achieve HMDA’s
purposes. None of these commenters
specifically addressed the benefits of the
data’s public disclosure to HMDA’s
purposes identified in the proposal.
Two industry commenters addressed
the balancing of privacy risks and
disclosure benefits. One industry
commenter stated that if there is ‘‘any
chance’’ that HMDA data could be used
for criminal purposes, the benefits of
disclosure could not outweigh the
privacy risks created by disclosure.
Another industry commenter suggested
that the balancing test requires the
Bureau to modify the data to the point
that re-identification risk is ‘‘remote,’’
although the commenter did not
elaborate on what that term means or

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what would need to be shown to meet
it.
A few industry commenters
recommended that the Bureau disclose
the new data required under the 2015
HMDA Final Rule only in aggregate
form, and one industry commenter
stated that the Bureau should not
disclose the new data to the public at
all. Another industry commenter
suggested that the Bureau disclose all
HMDA data, including data publicly
disclosed under the Board’s disclosure
regime, in aggregate form only.
Several commenters generally
supported the Bureau’s proposal. These
commenters generally agreed with the
Bureau’s assessment and proposed
balancing of privacy risks and
disclosure benefits, although almost all
of these commenters disagreed with the
proposal’s treatment of a few specific
fields and advocated for greater
disclosure, as discussed below in part
IV.B. A group of consumer advocate
commenters emphasized that loan-level
HMDA data have long been publicly
disclosed without any evidence the data
has been used to harm applicants and
borrowers. These commenters asserted
that industry commenters’ claims about
re-identification risk failed to account
for the Bureau’s proposed modifications
and stated that the HMDA data the
Bureau proposed to disclose would be
unlikely to be used to engage in identity
theft. These commenters also provided
detailed descriptions of the benefits of
public disclosure of HMDA data to
HMDA’s purposes. An industry
commenter described HMDA data as a
critical source of information for the
public to understand the mortgage
market and to analyze the impact of
public policies on communities and
borrowers. This industry commenter
supported the expansion of the data
under the 2015 HMDA Final Rule and
the Bureau’s proposal to disclose much
of the new data. Another industry
commenter similarly stated that much of
the new data required to be reported
under the 2015 HMDA Final Rule is
vital to accurate and complete fair
lending analyses and to understanding
the housing needs of communities. An
individual commenter also expressed
support for the public availability of
HMDA data, noting in particular the
usefulness of the data to identify what
the commenter described as ‘‘predatory’’
lending.
Bureau Response
For the reasons described below, the
Bureau determines that none of the
general comments it received provide a
sufficient basis to make changes to the
proposed policy guidance. On the other

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hand, as explained below in part IV.B,
the Bureau determines that some
specific comments it received about
particular data fields provide an
adequate basis to make changes to the
proposed treatment of these fields.
HMDA is a disclosure statute; public
disclosure of HMDA data is central to
the achievement of HMDA’s goals.32
The Bureau acknowledges, as it did in
the proposal, that the modifications it
intends to apply to the loan-level
HMDA data disclosed to the public will
not completely eliminate privacy risks.
Nevertheless, the Bureau determines
that, to the extent disclosure creates
risks to applicant and borrower privacy,
such risks are justified by the benefits of
such release to the public in light of
HMDA’s purposes.
The public loan-level HMDA data
have always displayed a high level of
record uniqueness and included fields
that are also found in identified public
records.33 The Bureau believes that
some degree of re-identification risk in
connection with the public disclosure of
the data is acceptable because HMDA
requires the Bureau to consider not only
the risk posed by disclosure, but also
the benefits of disclosure to HMDA’s
purposes. The Bureau does not believe
that HMDA permits it to modify data
based solely on the existence of a
32 See 12 U.S.C. 2801(b) (‘‘The purpose of this
chapter is to provide the citizens and public
officials of the United States with sufficient
information’’ to enable them to determine whether
depository institutions are filling their obligations
to serve the housing needs of the communities and
neighborhoods in which they are located and to
assist public officials in their determination of the
distribution of public sector investments in a
manner designed to improve the private investment
environment) (emphasis added); 12 CFR 1003.1
(‘‘This part implements the Home Mortgage
Disclosure Act, which is intended to provide the
public with loan data that can be used:’’ to help
determine whether financial institutions are serving
the housing needs of their communities; to assist
public officials in distributing public-sector
investment so as to attract private investment to
areas where it is needed; and to assist in identifying
possible discriminatory lending patterns and
enforcing antidiscrimination statutes) (emphasis
added).
33 In 2005, researchers at the Board found that
‘‘[m]ore than 90 percent of the loan records in a
given year’s HMDA data are unique—that is, an
individual lender reported only one loan in a given
census tract for a specific loan amount.’’ Robert B.
Avery et al., ‘‘New Information Reported under
HMDA and Its Application in Fair Lending
Enforcement,’’ at 367, Fed. Res. Bull. (Summer
2005), available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/
pubs/bulletin/2005/3-05hmda.pdf. In the 2017
paper cited by a group of industry commenters, the
author described the high record uniqueness
observed in the 2014 public HMDA data for a
particular county and stated that, in a census tract
that he identified as presenting low re-identification
risk compared to others in the county, he was able
to re-identify 72 percent of borrowers with loans by
the same lender by matching the public HMDA data
to public records. See Yezer, supra note 30, at 14–
16.

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‘‘chance’’ that HMDA data could be
used for harmful purposes, as suggested
by one industry commenter, without
considering such risk in light of the
benefits of disclosure to HMDA’s
purposes. Similarly, the Bureau believes
it would be inconsistent with HMDA to
modify the public data to the point that
re-identification risk is ‘‘remote,’’ as
suggested by another industry
commenter, instead of to the point that
any privacy risk created by the
disclosure is justified by the benefits of
the data to HMDA’s purposes.
Under the final policy guidance, the
Bureau intends to modify every new
field required under the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule that it has identified as likely
to substantially facilitate the reidentification of an applicant or
borrower. The Bureau is also making
changes to the proposal concerning
specific data fields where commenters
pointed out that the proposal would
have left unmodified data that would
substantially facilitate re-identification.
Further, the Bureau intends to
significantly reduce the precision of
loan amount in the public data.34 Loan
amount is a field that was required to
be reported prior to the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule and that the Bureau believes
to be a significant contributor to reidentification risk in the HMDA data.
The Bureau has carefully considered
the risk that a potential adversary, such
as an applicant’s or borrower’s neighbor
or acquaintance, may be able to reidentify the HMDA data by relying on
personal knowledge about the applicant
or borrower. As discussed in more detail
in the proposal,35 although the Bureau
believes that location and demographic
information may be more likely to be
known than other information in the
HMDA data, it is impossible to
determine the exact content of any preexisting personal knowledge such a
potential adversary may possess. None
of the comments provided any basis for
the Bureau to make reliable predictions
as to what this knowledge would be.
34 Prior to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, loan
amount was reported rounded to the nearest
thousand. Under the Board’s disclosure regime, this
field was disclosed to the public without
modification. Consistent with its proposal and as
discussed in part IV.B below, under the final policy
guidance the Bureau intends to disclose loan
amount binned in $10,000 intervals.
35 See 82 FR 44586, 44594 (Sept. 25, 2017). The
Bureau noted that, to the extent that disclosure of
census tract and demographic information such as
ethnicity and race would create risk to applicant
and borrower privacy, it believed the risks would
be justified by the benefits of disclosure. Id. at
44598. As discussed in part IV.B, two industry
commenters opposed the proposal to disclose
without modification census tract. No commenter
opposed the proposal to disclose without
modification race and ethnicity.

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This uncertainty creates challenges for
evaluating the degree to which
individual data fields contribute to the
risk of re-identification by such a
potential adversary. The Bureau initially
determined that, because the preexisting personal knowledge possessed
by such a potential adversary is
typically limited to information about a
single individual, or a small number of
individuals, any re-identification
attempt by such a potential adversary
would likely target or affect a limited
number of individuals.36 No commenter
disputed this statement, much less
rebutted it with data or analysis.
The Bureau concludes, based on the
information currently available to it,
that the HMDA data it intends to
disclose under this final policy
guidance will be of minimal value to an
adversary seeking to perpetrate identity
theft or financial fraud against
applicants and borrowers or to engage in
other unlawful conduct.37 Specifically,
as noted in the proposal, the HMDA
data do not include information
typically required to open new accounts
in a consumer’s name, such as Social
Security number, date of birth, place of
birth, passport number, or driver’s
license number, nor do they include
information useful to perpetrate existing
account fraud, such as account numbers
or passwords. Although an adversary
might try to use almost any information
relating to an individual to steal her
identity or commit fraud against her, the
Bureau concludes that disclosure of
HMDA data would be unlikely to
increase the information already
publicly available that an adversary
could exploit for these purposes. For
example, the public HMDA data will
include the name of the financial
institution and other details about the
loan terms that could be used in a social
engineering attack against a borrower by
a perpetrator pretending to be the
financial institution or against a
financial institution by a perpetrator
pretending to be the borrower. However,
these and other data that could be used
for this purpose are often already
publicly available—in identified form—
in real estate transaction records.
The Bureau determines that an
individual seeking to rob or adversely
possess a property would be unlikely to
undertake the effort required to reidentify public HMDA data to determine
whether such a property is a vacation
home, as suggested by an industry
36 Id.

at 44594.
as noted in the proposal, the Bureau
believes that the data would be of minimal use for
such purposes even without modification. Id. at
44595.
37 Indeed,

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commenter. With respect to the industry
commenter that expressed concern that
lenders would be subject to increased
litigation in the event public HMDA
data was used for criminal purposes, as
noted above, the Bureau concludes that
it is unlikely the public HMDA data
would be used for criminal purposes.
Even if the data were used for such
purposes, the Bureau is unable to
identify a basis for lender liability under
such a circumstance, and the
commenter did not describe how such
increased litigation would arise.
The Bureau acknowledges that, if the
public HMDA data were re-identified,
that is, if an adversary were to link an
identified individual to his or her
HMDA data, certain fields would reveal
information about an applicant’s or
borrower’s creditworthiness. However,
information about applicant and
borrower creditworthiness is important
to HMDA’s purposes. For example, this
information assists in identifying
possible discriminatory lending patterns
by helping ensure that users are
comparing applicants and borrowers
with similar profiles, thereby
controlling for factors that might
provide non-discriminatory
explanations for disparities in credit
and pricing decisions. As explained
below, despite the opposition of many
commenters, the Bureau is issuing final
policy guidance that excludes from the
public HMDA data credit score, which
is the field that would reveal the most
about an applicant’s or borrower’s
creditworthiness.
The Bureau described and analyzed
potential adversaries’ incentives to reidentify public HMDA data in the
proposed policy guidance.38 Even
though some adversaries may have such
incentives and loan-level HMDA data
has been made available to the public
since 1991, the Bureau is unaware of
any instances of re-identification of the
data for harmful purposes. Commenters
provided no evidence of such reidentification. In the 2017 paper cited
by a group of industry commenters, the
author states that, using the 2014 public
HMDA data, he re-identified 72 percent
of borrowers with loans by the same
lender in a particular census tract by
matching the data to public records, but
it appears that this exercise was
undertaken solely to demonstrate that
such matching can be done.39 Also in
this paper, the author points to several
projects in which academic and
government researchers matched HMDA
data to other data sources—some to
private datasets, others to public
38 See

id. at 44593–95.
supra note 30, at 14–16.

39 Yezer,

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records—for purposes of research
related to mortgage lending.40 It is not
clear from several of the resulting
papers whether the researchers used
public HMDA data to perform the
matching (at least one appears to have
relied on nonpublic HMDA data), but,
in any event, it appears that in none of
these instances were the HMDA data
matched to other data sources for
purposes of re-identifying borrowers, let
alone for purposes of harming
consumers. The Bureau concludes the
modifications it intends to apply to the
public HMDA data under the final
policy guidance will minimize the
attractiveness of the HMDA data for
harmful purposes, and so will reduce
any incentives for adversaries to reidentify the data.41
In 2015, the Bureau determined that
public disclosure of the new HMDA
data required under the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule would further the purposes
of HMDA. As noted above, the statute
and Regulation C are clear that HMDA’s
purpose is the provision of data to the
public and public officials in
furtherance of HMDA’s goals. Congress
itself determined that many of the new
data should be collected and reported to
further HMDA’s purposes, and the
Bureau determined in the rulemaking
resulting in the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
that each of the new HMDA data fields
it added using its discretionary
authority furthers HMDA’s goals.
Several commenters described how the
new HMDA data furthers HMDA’s
purposes, and no commenters provided
analysis or data to support the general
statement made by a few commenters
that the public disclosure of HMDA data
does not further the statute’s purposes.
For purposes of this final policy
guidance, the Bureau takes as given the
determinations made in the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule, but the Bureau has stated
that it may reconsider these
determinations with respect to some or
all of the discretionary fields through a
new legislative rulemaking.
Finally, the Bureau declines to
exclude from the public data or disclose
only in aggregate form all HMDA data
or all new data required to be reported
under the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, as
suggested by several commenters. As
noted, HMDA is a disclosure statute. It
requires that HMDA data is made
40 Id.

at 11–14.
example, the Bureau believes that low
credit scores and high debt-to-income ratios may
provide information about a borrower’s financial
condition that may suggest vulnerability to scams
relating to debt relief or credit repair. The final
policy guidance will exclude credit score from the
public HMDA data and will top-code debt-toincome ratio to protect very high ratios.
41 For

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available to the public except as the
Bureau determines necessary to protect
applicant and borrower privacy
interests. The Bureau interprets its
obligation under the statute to permit
modification of the data made available
to the public only where the privacy
risk such disclosure would pose would
not be justified by the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
Under the balancing test, excluding
from public disclosure or disclosing
only in aggregate form all HMDA data
or all new HMDA data would require
the Bureau to determine that the loanlevel disclosure of each individual data
field creates privacy risks that are not
justified by the benefits of disclosure to
HMDA’s purposes and that the only
modification available to appropriately
balance the risks and benefits is
exclusion from the public data.
However, for the reasons discussed in
the proposal,42 the Bureau determines
that most of the HMDA data create low,
if any, privacy risk—they neither
substantially facilitate re-identification
nor do they create a risk of harm or
sensitivity—and that any risks are
justified by the benefits in light of
HMDA’s purposes. Except with respect
to total units and affordable units,
discussed below in part IV.B, none of
the comments provided any information
that casts doubt on this conclusion.
Therefore, the Bureau concludes that
excluding all HMDA data or all new
HMDA data would be inconsistent with
the statute and the balancing test, which
the Bureau has by law bound itself to
use to make disclosure determinations.
B. Comments Concerning the Proposed
Treatment of Specific Data Fields Under
the Balancing Test

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Data To Be Disclosed Without
Modification
The Bureau proposed to publicly
disclose the following data fields as
reported, without modification: 43
• The following information about
applicants, borrowers, and the
underwriting process: Income, sex, race,
ethnicity, name and version of the credit
scoring model, reasons for denial, and
automated underwriting system (AUS)
name.44
• The following information about
the property securing the loan: State,
county, census tract, occupancy type,
construction method, manufactured
42 See

82 FR 44586, 44597–98 (Sept. 25, 2017).
at 44597–99.
44 Note that, as discussed below, the Bureau
proposed to exclude free-form text fields used to
report certain data for the following data fields:
ethnicity, race, name and version of the credit
scoring model, reasons for denial, and AUS name.
Id. at 44609–10.
43 Id.

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housing secured property type,
manufactured housing land property
interest, total units, and affordable
units.
• The following information about
the application or loan: Loan term, loan
type, loan purpose, whether the
application was submitted directly to
the financial institution, whether the
loan was initially payable to the
financial institution, whether a
preapproval was requested, action
taken, type of purchaser, lien status,
prepayment penalty term, introductory
rate period, interest rate, rate spread,
total loan costs or total points and fees,
origination charges, total discount
points, lender credits, whether the loan
was a high-cost mortgage under the
Home Ownership and Equity Protection
Act (HOEPA), balloon payment,
interest-only payment, negative
amortization, other non-amortizing
features, combined loan-to-value ratio,
open-end line of credit flag, business or
commercial purpose flag, and reverse
mortgage flag.
• The following information about
the lender: Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)
and financial institution name.45
The data fields above that were required
to be reported under Regulation C prior
to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule were
disclosed to the public without
modification under the Board’s
disclosure regime. The Bureau’s
continued disclosure of these data fields
thus is consistent with the government’s
longstanding approach.
With the exception of LEI, financial
institution name, action taken, reasons
for denial, census tract, and income,
each of which is discussed further
below, the Bureau initially determined
that disclosing the data listed above in
the loan-level HMDA data released to
the public would likely present low risk
to applicant and borrower privacy. The
Bureau also stated that, to the extent
that disclosure of these fields would
create risk to applicant or borrower
privacy, the Bureau believed the risks
would be justified by the benefits of
disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.46
45 See 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(2)–(7), (a)(8)(i), (a)(9)(ii),
(a)(10)(i), (a)(10)(iii), (a)(11)–(14), (a)(15)(i) (name
and version of credit scoring model), (a)(16)–(22),
(a)(24)–(27), (a)(29)–(33), (a)(35)(i) (AUS name),
(a)(36)–(38).
46 82 FR 44586, 44598 (Sept. 25, 2017) (describing
the utility of these data fields in light of HMDA’s
purposes: helping the public and public officials to
determine whether financial institutions are serving
the housing needs of their communities, to
distribute public-sector investment so as to attract
private investment to areas where it is needed, and
to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns
and enforce antidiscrimination statutes).

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An industry commenter and a group
of consumer advocate commenters
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
disclose without modification the fields
the Bureau identified as likely to create
low privacy risk. The industry
commenter stated these data fields
would provide valuable information
about the mortgage market that is not
available from any other source. The
consumer advocate commenters stated
that data fields relating to pricing—
including the fields for interest rate, rate
spread, total loan costs or total points
and fees, origination charges, and
discount points—would help data users
identify potentially discriminatory price
disparities within the prime and
subprime mortgage markets. These
commenters also stated that the data
fields related to loan terms and
conditions—such as the term of any
prepayment penalty, the length of any
introductory rate period, and whether
the contractual terms include nonamortizing features such as a balloon
payment—would serve as an earlywarning system, enabling community
organizations and government agencies
to assess the prevalence of unfair,
deceptive, and unaffordable lending.
These commenters additionally
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
disclose new race and ethnicity
subcategories for Asian and Hispanic
loan applicants. In their view,
disclosure of these subcategories would
help data users identify ‘‘discrimination
and targeting’’ with greater precision
and would promote responsible lending
in all communities. These commenters
also stated that disclosure of new data
fields on manufactured housing would
provide important information about the
manufactured home market, including
any issues of concern related to
affordability, sustainability, or fair
lending. Another consumer advocate
commenter supported the Bureau’s
proposal to disclose whether the
property is or will be used by the
applicant or borrower as a principal
residence, a second residence, or an
investment property.
Except for total units and affordable
units, the Bureau intends to disclose
without modification the data fields the
Bureau identified in the proposal as
likely presenting low risk to applicant
and borrower privacy, as proposed. For
the reasons discussed above and in the
proposal, the Bureau determines, based
on the information currently available to
it, that disclosing these data fields as
reported appropriately balances the
privacy risks that may be created by
such disclosure and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.

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With respect to LEI, financial
institution name, and census tract, the
Bureau acknowledged in the proposal
that disclosure would likely
substantially facilitate the reidentification of applicants or
borrowers. However, the Bureau
initially determined that these risks to
applicant and borrower privacy would
be justified by the benefits of disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.47 With
respect to income, action taken, and
reasons for denial, the Bureau
recognized in the proposal that, if the
HMDA data were re-identified,
disclosure would likely create a risk of
harm or sensitivity, but the Bureau
initially determined these risks would
be justified by the benefits of disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.48 The
Bureau responds to the specific
comments it received on its proposed
treatment of these data and describes its
final determinations below.
Legal Entity Identifier and Financial
Institution Name
Regulation C requires a financial
institution, when submitting its loan/
application register to the Bureau, to
report the financial institution’s LEI and
name.49 This requirement is effective
January 1, 2019, and will apply to the
submission of 2018 HMDA data.50 The
LEI is an identifier issued to the
financial institution by either a utility
endorsed by the LEI Regulatory
Oversight Committee or a utility
endorsed or otherwise governed by the
Global LEI Foundation (GLEIF) (or any
successor of the GLEIF) after the GLEIF
assumes operational governance of the
global LEI system.51 Prior to the 2015
HMDA Final Rule, a financial
institution was required to report its
name and HMDA Reporter’s
Identification Number (HMDA RID), a
ten-digit number that consisted of an
entity identifier specified by the
financial institution’s appropriate
Federal agency combined with a code
that designates the agency. Both the
financial institution’s name and HMDA
RID were disclosed to the public
without modification under the Board’s
disclosure regime.
The Bureau proposed to disclose to
the public without modification LEI and
financial institution name as reported.52
The Bureau initially determined that
disclosure of these data fields in the
loan-level HMDA data released to the
47 Id.

at 44597–99.

public would likely substantially
facilitate the re-identification of
applicants or borrowers, but that this
risk to applicant and borrower privacy
would be justified by the benefits of
disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.53 An industry commenter
stated that, due to the risk of frivolous
class action litigation against financial
institutions, the public HMDA data
should not reveal financial institutions’
identities.
The Bureau declines to exclude LEI
and financial institution name from the
public HMDA data based on the risk of
frivolous class action litigation against
financial institutions. As described
above, HMDA requires each financial
institution to make its modified loan/
application register available to the
public, which necessarily entails
identification of the lender. Though the
2015 HMDA Final Rule shifted
responsibility for disclosing the
modified loan/application register from
institutions to the Bureau, the Bureau
concludes that it must maintain the
public’s ability to obtain loan-level data
for an individual lender. Further, the
Bureau concludes that excluding these
data fields, and thereby concealing the
identities of lenders, would greatly
undermine the utility of the public data
for HMDA’s purposes, because HMDA’s
purposes in large part concern
evaluating the practices of individual
lenders. Although the Bureau
appreciates the industry commenter’s
concern about frivolous litigation
against financial institutions and agrees
such litigation should not be
encouraged, it declines to exclude LEI
and financial institution name from the
public data on this basis.
The Bureau intends to disclose
without modification LEI and financial
institution name, as proposed. For the
reasons discussed above and in the
proposal, the Bureau determines, based
on the information currently available to
it, that disclosing without modification
LEI and financial institution name
appropriately balances the privacy risks
that may be created by disclosure of
these fields and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
Action Taken and Reasons for Denial
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the action taken by
the financial institution in response to
an application.54 Financial institutions
must report a code from a specified list
set forth in the HMDA Filing

48 Id.
49 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(i)(A); 12 CFR 1003.5(a)(3)
(effective Jan. 1, 2019).
50 80 FR 66128, 66312 (Oct. 28, 2015).
51 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(i)(A).
52 82 FR 44586, 44597–99 (Sept. 25, 2017).

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53 Id. at 44598 (stating that the ability to identify
the financial institution by name is critical for users
to evaluate the lending practices of a financial
institution).
54 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(8)(i).

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657

Instructions Guide to indicate the action
taken.55 Financial institutions were
required to report this data field prior to
the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, and this
data field was disclosed to the public
without modification under the Board’s
disclosure regime.
Regulation C also requires financial
institutions to report the principal
reason or reasons the financial
institution denied the application, if
applicable.56 If the financial institution
denied the application, it must report
one or more codes from a specified list
to indicate the reason or reasons for
denial.57 Prior to the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule, reporting of reasons for denial was
optional, except as required by the OCC
and FDIC for certain supervised
financial institutions.58 When reported,
reasons for denial was disclosed to the
public without modification under the
Board’s disclosure regime.
The Bureau proposed to disclose to
the public without modification action
taken and reasons for denial as
reported.59 The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing action taken
(if an application was denied) and
reasons for denial in the loan-level
HMDA data released to the public
would likely disclose information about
the applicant or borrower that is not
otherwise public and may be harmful or
sensitive. Nevertheless, the Bureau
55 Bureau of Consumer Fin. Prot., ‘‘Filing
instructions guide for HMDA data collected in
2018—OMB Control No. 3170–0008,’’ at 81 (Sept.
2018) (hereinafter FIG), available at https://
s3.amazonaws.com/cfpb-hmda-public/prod/help/
2018-hmda-fig-2018-hmda-rule.pdf. Action taken is
reported using the following codes: Code 1—Loan
originated; Code 2—Application approved but not
accepted; Code 3—Application denied; Code 4—
Application withdrawn by applicant; Code 5—File
closed for incompleteness; Code 6—Purchased loan;
Code 7—Preapproval request denied; Code 8—
Preapproval request approved but not accepted.
56 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(16). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report reasons for denial for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA, although reporting may be required by
another law or regulation. See 83 FR 45325, 45329
(Sept. 7, 2018).
57 FIG, supra note 55, at 96–98. Reasons for denial
is reported using the following codes: Code 1—
Debt-to-income ratio; Code 2—Employment history;
Code 3—Credit history; Code 4—Collateral; Code
5—Insufficient cash (down payment, closing costs);
Code 6—Unverifiable information; Code 7—Credit
application incomplete; Code 8—Mortgage
insurance denied; Code 9—Other; Code 10—Not
applicable; Code 1111—Exempt.
58 12 CFR 1003.4(c) (effective Jan. 1, 1990).
Financial institutions regulated by the OCC are
required to report reasons for denial on their HMDA
loan/application registers pursuant to 12 CFR
27.3(a)(1)(i), 128.6. Similarly, pursuant to
regulations transferred from the Office of Thrift
Supervision, certain financial institutions
supervised by the FDIC are required to report
reasons for denial on their HMDA loan/application
registers. 12 CFR 390.147.
59 82 FR 44586, 44597–99 (Sept. 25, 2017).

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initially determined that this risk to
applicant and borrower privacy would
be justified by the benefits of disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.60
A group of consumer advocate
commenters supported the Bureau’s
proposal to disclose action taken, stating
that it is essential for determining
whether lenders are responsibly meeting
credit needs in a non-discriminatory
manner. These commenters also stated
that disclosure of reasons for denial—in
conjunction with disclosure of the name
and version of the credit scoring model
and automated underwriting system
used by the financial institution, as the
Bureau proposed—would increase
transparency in the marketplace and
support fair lending enforcement by
enabling data users to determine if there
are differences in reasons for denial
based on the credit scoring model or
automated underwriting system used.
An industry commenter
recommended that the Bureau exclude
action taken and reasons for denial from
the public HMDA data for commercialpurpose multifamily loans only. The
commenter stated that disclosure of
these fields would create reidentification risk and pose a unique
risk of harm for commercial-purpose
multifamily applicants. In the
commenter’s view, if the HMDA data
were re-identified, commercial-purpose
multifamily applicants could suffer
negative reputational harm from certain
information reported for action taken—
specifically, ‘‘Denied,’’ ‘‘Withdrawn by
applicant,’’ or ‘‘Closed as incomplete’’—
and from any information relating to the
reason for a denial. According to the
commenter, the disclosure of this
information could adversely affect these
applicants’ business relationships and
these applicants may not be able to
mitigate such harm effectively.
The Bureau does not believe that the
concerns expressed by the industry
commenter justify excluding from the
public HMDA data action taken and
reasons for denial for commercialpurpose multifamily applications and
loans. The risk of harm identified by the
commenter could arise only with
respect to an application that did not
result in an origination. As discussed in
more detail in the proposal,61 the
Bureau concludes that re-identification
risk is significantly reduced for
applications that did not result in
originations. The Bureau is not aware of
any public or private dataset containing
60 Id. at 44598 (describing the utility of action
taken and reasons for denial in light of HMDA’s
purposes, including helping the public and public
officials to identify possible discriminatory lending
patterns and enforce antidiscrimination statutes).
61 See id. at 44593 n.55.

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information about applications that do
not result in originated mortgage loans.
The Bureau believes that the lack of
public information about applications
would significantly reduce the
likelihood that an adversary could
match the record of a HMDA loan
application that was not originated to an
identified record in another dataset.
Even if an applicant were to be reidentified, however, the Bureau
concludes the harms the commenter
envisions are unlikely to occur. Loanlevel data for multifamily applications
have been disclosed publicly since
1991, and the Bureau is not aware of
any evidence that adversaries have reidentified these applications in the
public HMDA data or that this type of
harm has occurred. Further, even if this
type of reputational harm were likely to
occur, this harm would not be unique to
commercial-purpose multifamily
borrowers. Finally, if action taken were
excluded, users would be unable to
determine whether an application was
originated, critically impairing the
utility of the public data for HMDA’s
purposes.
The Bureau intends to disclose
without modification action taken and
reasons for denial, as proposed. For the
reasons discussed above and in the
proposal, the Bureau determines, based
on the information currently available to
it, that disclosing without modification
action taken and reasons for denial
appropriately balances the privacy risks
that may be created by disclosure of
these fields and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
State, County, and Census Tract
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the State, county,
and census tract of the property
securing or proposed to secure the
covered loan if the property is located
in an MSA or Metropolitan Division
(MD) in which the institution has a
home or branch office, or if the
institution is subject to § 1003.4(e).62
Institutions must report the State using
the two-letter State code of the property;
the county using the five-digit Federal
Information Processing Standards code
for the county; and the census tract
using the 11-digit census tract number
defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.63 As
originally enacted and implemented in
62 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(9)(ii). 12 CFR 1003.4(e)
requires banks and savings associations that are
required to report data on small business, small
farm, and community development lending under
regulations that implement the Community
Reinvestment Act (CRA) to collect the information
required by 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(9) for property located
outside MSAs and MDs in which the institution has
a home or branch office, or outside any MSA.
63 FIG, supra note 55, at 83–84.

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Regulation C, HMDA required financial
institutions to disclose information
about the financial institution’s
mortgage lending activity by census
tract.64 The 1992 amendments to HMDA
requiring institutions to make publicly
available their modified loan/
application registers included language
stating ‘‘[i]t is the sense of the Congress
that a depository institution should
provide loan register information under
this section in a format based on the
census tract in which the property is
located.’’ 65 State, county, and census
tract were disclosed to the public
without modification under the Board’s
disclosure regime.
The Bureau proposed to disclose to
the public without modification State,
county, and census tract as reported.66
The Bureau initially determined that
disclosure of State and county would
likely present low risk to applicant and
borrower privacy, and that, to the extent
that disclosure of these fields would
create risk to applicant and borrower
privacy, the risks would be justified by
the benefits of disclosure in light of
HMDA’s purposes. The Bureau initially
determined that disclosure of census
tract would likely substantially facilitate
the re-identification of applicants or
borrowers, but that this risk to applicant
and borrower privacy would be justified
by the benefits of disclosure in light of
HMDA’s purposes.67
One industry commenter opposed the
Bureau’s proposal to disclose census
tract without modification, and another
industry commenter opposed the
disclosure of this field for commercialpurpose multifamily loans. The first
industry commenter stated that, to
reduce re-identification risk, the Bureau
should exclude census tract from the
public loan-level HMDA data and
instead disclose ‘‘generalized census
tract classifications’’ for each
application or loan. The commenter
suggested that, for example, the Bureau
could indicate whether the property is
located in a low- or moderate-income
census tract or a census tract with a high
percentage of minority residents. The
second industry commenter stated that,
for commercial-purpose multifamily
loans only, the Bureau should exclude
64 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, Public
Law 94–200, section 304(a)(2)(A), 89 Stat. 1126
(Dec. 31, 1975); 12 CFR 203.4(a)(1) (effective June
28, 1976).
65 12 U.S.C. 2803(j)(2)(C).
66 82 FR 44586, 44597–99 (Sept. 25, 2017).
67 Id. at 44598 (describing the utility of census
tract in light of HMDA’s purposes, including
helping the public and public officials to determine
whether financial institutions are serving the
housing needs of their communities and to identify
possible discriminatory lending patterns and
enforce antidiscrimination statutes).

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census tract and county, and should
disclose State only where there are
enough multifamily originations in the
State to make re-identification risk
‘‘remote,’’ although the commenter did
not identify the number of originations
that would satisfy that standard.
According to the commenter, the
disclosure of these data fields would
pose elevated re-identification risk for
multifamily borrowers, as significantly
fewer commercial-purpose multifamily
loans are originated each year than
single-family loans.
The Bureau recognizes that disclosing
generalized census tract classifications
instead of the census tract would reduce
re-identification risk. Nevertheless, the
Bureau concludes that doing so would
critically undermine the utility of the
data for HMDA’s purposes. If census
tract were excluded from the HMDA
data, the public and public officials
would be unable to analyze the data at
a geographic level smaller than county.
Consequently, excluding census tract
would make it virtually impossible for
data users to identify possible
discriminatory lending patterns within
counties. For example, for a data user to
analyze whether a lender was engaged
in redlining, the user would need
census tract to compare lending
behavior among lenders in a particular
community or an individual lender’s
behavior in different communities.
Without census tract, users would also
be unable to determine whether lenders
were serving the housing needs of
communities within counties or identify
communities within counties where
public-sector investment is needed to
attract private investment. Additionally,
excluding census tract from disclosure
would also prevent financial
institutions from using HMDA to assess
their own fair lending risk by comparing
their data with other institutions.68
The Bureau also declines to exclude
State, county, and census tract for
commercial-purpose multifamily loans.
The Bureau determines that the privacy
risk created by the disclosure of census
tract, even if heightened with respect to
multifamily loans, is justified by the
critical benefits of this field to HMDA’s
purposes, as described in the above
68 See, e.g., Melanie Brody & Anjali Garg, ‘‘2013
HMDA Data Is Now Available; Mortgage Lenders
Should Consider Evaluating Redlining Risk,’’ K&L
Gates, Consumer Fin. Servs. Watch (Sept. 25, 2014),
available at https://
www.consumerfinancialserviceswatch.com/2014/
09/2013-hmda-data-is-now-available-mortgagelenders-should-consider-evaluating-redlining-risk/
(‘‘With the release of the 2013 HMDA data, lenders
can now evaluate their own 2013 redlining risk by
comparing their applications and originations in
high-minority census tracts to those of their
peers.’’).

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paragraph. The Bureau notes that, if
census tract is disclosed, disclosure of
county and State do not create
additional privacy risk, because
knowing the census tract allows a user
to discern the county and state, as
counties are geographic units within
states and census tracts are geographic
units within counties.
The Bureau intends to disclose
without modification State, county, and
census tract, as proposed. For the
reasons discussed above and in the
proposal, the Bureau determines, based
on the information currently available to
it, that disclosing without modification
State, county, and census tract
appropriately balances the privacy risks
that may be created by disclosure of
these fields and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
Income
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the gross annual
income they relied on in making the
credit decision or, if a credit decision
was not made, the gross annual income
they relied on in processing the
application. Financial institutions do
not have to report income for covered
loans for which the credit decision did
not consider income (or for applications
for which the credit decision would not
have considered income).69 Financial
institutions must report income
rounded to the nearest thousand.70 The
Board amended Regulation C in 1989 to
require reporting of income as part of its
implementation of FIRREA.71 Prior to
the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, financial
institutions were required to report this
data field rounded to the nearest
thousand. Under the Board’s disclosure
regime, this data field was disclosed to
the public without modification.
The Bureau proposed to disclose
without modification income as
reported.72 The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing income in
the loan-level HMDA data released to
the public would likely disclose
information about the applicant or
borrower that is not otherwise public
and may be harmful or sensitive.
Nevertheless, the Bureau initially
determined that this risk to applicant
and borrower privacy would be justified
by the benefits of disclosure in light of
HMDA’s purposes.73
CFR 1003.4(a)(10)(iii).
4(a)(10)(iii)–10.
71 54 FR 51356, 51363 (Dec. 15, 1989).
72 82 FR 44586, 44597–99 (Sept. 25, 2017).
73 Id. at 44598 (describing the utility of income in
light of HMDA’s purposes, including helping the
public and public officials to determine whether
financial institutions are serving the housing needs
of their communities and to identify possible

659

An industry commenter opposed the
Bureau’s proposal to disclose income
without modification and recommended
that the Bureau exclude income from
the public HMDA data. The commenter
stated that the new data required under
the 2015 HMDA Final Rule would
increase the risk that the HMDA data
could be re-identified, and that
information about a consumer’s income
is generally not available to the public
and is considered sensitive by many
consumers. The commenter also stated
that income data would be
‘‘inconsequential’’ because the 2015
HMDA Final Rule modified Regulation
C to require financial institutions to
report debt-to-income ratio.
The Bureau does not believe that the
concerns expressed by the commenter
justify excluding income from the
public HMDA data. The Bureau
recognizes, as it stated in the proposal,
that, if the HMDA data were reidentified, disclosure of income would
likely create a risk of harm or
sensitivity.74 However, the Bureau
believes that this risk is justified by the
benefits of disclosure to HMDA’s
purposes. For example, income data
plays a crucial role in: (1) Helping to
identify whether the credit needs of
people with low and moderate incomes
in particular communities are being
met; (2) the extent to which borrowers
with low and moderate incomes are
using certain products, such as home
equity lines of credit; and (3) the extent
to which lower-income borrowers are
receiving credit under different terms
than higher-income borrowers. The
Bureau also believes that income data
will continue to be valuable for
achieving HMDA’s fair lending
purposes, notwithstanding the
disclosure of debt-to-income ratio data
pursuant to HMDA. Although lenders
may rely more on debt-to-income ratio
than on income in underwriting a loan,
income will continue to be valuable as
a proxy for debt-to-income ratio if debtto-income ratio is not reported as a
result of the EGRRCPA 75 or if the
precision of debt-to-income ratio is
reduced in the public data as a result of
binning or top- or bottom-coding. To the
extent the commenter’s concern is that
the HMDA data the Bureau proposed to
disclose presents increased reidentification risk compared to the data
disclosed under the Board’s disclosure

69 12

70 Comment

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discriminatory lending patterns and enforce
antidiscrimination statutes).
74 Id.
75 As described in greater detail in part II.B,
above, the EGRRCPA amended HMDA by adding
partial exemptions from HMDA’s data collection
and reporting requirements for certain insured
depository institutions and insured credit unions.

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regime, the Bureau notes that it intends
to modify every new field required
under the 2015 HMDA Final Rule that
it has identified as likely to
substantially facilitate the reidentification of an applicant or
borrower. Further, the Bureau intends to
modify loan amount, a field that was
disclosed without modification under
the Board’s disclosure regime and that
the Bureau determines to be a
significant contributor to reidentification risk in the HMDA data.
The Bureau intends to disclose
without modification income. For the
reasons discussed above and in the
proposal, the Bureau determines, based
on the information currently available to
it, that disclosing without modification
income appropriately balances the
privacy risks that may be created by
disclosure of this field and the benefits
of such disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.

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Data To Be Excluded or Otherwise
Modified in the Loan-Level HMDA Data
The Bureau proposed to exclude or
otherwise modify several data fields in
the public HMDA data: The universal
loan identifier; application date; loan
amount; action taken date; property
address; age; credit score; property
value; debt-to-income ratio; the unique
identifier assigned by the Nationwide
Mortgage Licensing System and Registry
for the mortgage loan originator; and
AUS result. The Bureau also proposed
to exclude free-form text fields used in
certain instances to report the following
data: Ethnicity; race; the name and
version of the credit scoring model;
reasons for denial; and AUS name.
Below the Bureau addresses the
comments it received and describes its
final action on each of these data fields
and on two additional data fields it did
not propose to modify but intends to
modify under the final policy guidance:
Total units and affordable units.
Universal Loan Identifier or NonUniversal Loan Identifier
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report a universal loan
identifier (ULI) for each covered loan or
application that can be used to identify
and retrieve the application file.76
Regulation C sets forth detailed
requirements concerning the ULI to be
assigned and reported.77 A ULI must
begin with the financial institution’s
LEI, followed by up to 23 additional
characters to identify the covered loan
or application, and then end with a twocharacter check digit calculated
76 12

CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(i).

77 Id.

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according to the methodology
prescribed in appendix C of Regulation
C.78 In addition, a ULI must be unique
within the institution and must not
contain any information that could be
used to directly identify the applicant or
borrower.79 Institutions reporting a loan
for which a ULI was previously assigned
and reported must report the ULI that
was previously assigned and reported
for the loan. The ULI must be reported
as an alphanumeric field.80 The
requirement in the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule to report a ULI replaced the
requirement under prior Regulation C
that a financial institution report an
identifying number for the loan or loan
application. Under the Board’s
disclosure regime, this loan or loan
application identifying number was
excluded from the public HMDA data.
The Bureau added the requirement to
report a ULI to implement the DoddFrank Act’s amendment to HMDA
providing for the collection and
reporting of, ‘‘as the Bureau may
determine to be appropriate, a universal
loan identifier.’’ 81
Insured depository institutions and
insured credit unions are not required to
report ULI for loans or applications that
are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA.82 The 2018 HMDA Final
Rule provides, however, that—because
loans and applications must be
identifiable in the HMDA data to ensure
proper HMDA submission, processing,
and compliance—institutions that
choose not to report ULI pursuant to the
EGRRCPA must report a non-universal
loan identifier (NULI) for each loan and
application.83 The NULI may be
composed of up to 22 characters and,
among other requirements, must be
unique within the insured depository
institution or insured credit union,
though it need not be unique within the
industry.84
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding ULI.85 The Bureau
initially determined that disclosing ULI
in the loan-level HMDA data released to
the public would likely substantially
facilitate the re-identification of an
applicant or borrower and that this risk
would not be justified by the benefits of
the disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.86
78 12

CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(i)(A) through (C).
CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(i)(B)(3).
80 FIG, supra note 55, at 77–79.
81 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(G).
82 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
83 Id. at 45330.
84 Id.; see also FIG, supra note 55, at 78–79.
85 82 FR 44586, 44599–44600 (Sept. 25, 2017).
86 Id. at 44599 (describing the utility of ULI in
light of HMDA’s purposes, including helping the
79 12

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A few industry commenters
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
exclude ULI from the public HMDA
data. A group of consumer advocate
commenters did not oppose the
Bureau’s proposal to exclude ULI but
recommended that, separate from the
HMDA data, the Bureau publish an
additional data product that, according
to these commenters, would serve some
of the same purposes as ULI.
Specifically, these commenters
recommended that the Bureau publish
data on each financial institution’s loan
purchases by income level and by year
originated. According to these
commenters, this data would help data
users assess whether financial
institutions are purchasing loans made
to low- and moderate-income borrowers
from one another to improve their CRA
ratings.
The Bureau intends to exclude ULI
from the public HMDA data, as
proposed, and to exclude NULI if it is
reported instead of ULI. For the reasons
discussed above and in the proposal, the
Bureau determines, based on the
information currently available to it,
that excluding ULI and NULI from the
public HMDA data appropriately
balances the privacy risks that may be
created by the disclosure of these fields
and the benefits of such disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.87
Application Date
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report, except for
purchased covered loans, the date the
application was received or the date
shown on the application form.88 This
date must be reported by financial
institutions as the exact year, month,
and day, in the format of
YYYYMMDD.89 Financial institutions
were required to report this data field
prior to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule. The
Board amended Regulation C in 1989 to
require reporting of the date the
application was received as part of its
implementation of FIRREA.90 Under the
Board’s disclosure regime, application
date was excluded from the public
HMDA data.
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by continuing to exclude
public and public officials to determine whether
financial institutions are serving the housing needs
of their communities).
87 Regarding the consumer advocate commenters’
request for additional data, the Bureau will
consider, as it does in the ordinary course of its
business, whether to make additional information
related to mortgage lending available to the public.
88 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(ii).
89 FIG, supra note 55, at 79.
90 54 FR 51356, 51363 (Dec. 15, 1989).

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application date.91 The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing application
date in the loan-level HMDA data
released to the public would likely
substantially facilitate the reidentification of an applicant or
borrower and that this risk would not be
justified by the benefits of disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.92
A few industry commenters
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
continue to exclude application date
from the public HMDA data. Two of
these commenters stated that excluding
application date, along with the other
data points the Bureau proposed to
exclude, would reduce re-identification
risk. Another of these commenters
stated that excluding this data field,
along with the other data points the
Bureau proposed to exclude, would
reduce the likelihood that community
bank customers would become victims
of identity theft or fraud.
The Bureau intends to exclude
application date from the public HMDA
data, as proposed. For the reasons
discussed above and in the proposal, the
Bureau determines, based on the
information currently available to it,
that excluding application date from the
public HMDA data appropriately
balances the privacy risks that may be
created by the disclosure of this field
and the benefits of such disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.
Loan Amount and Property Value

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Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the amount of the
covered loan or the amount applied
for.93 For closed-end mortgage loans,
open-end lines of credit, and reverse
mortgages, this amount is the amount to
be repaid as disclosed on the legal
obligation, the amount of credit
available to the borrower, and the initial
principal limit, respectively. Loan
amount must be submitted by financial
institutions in numeric form reflecting
the exact dollar amount of the loan.94
Prior to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, this
data field was reported rounded to the
nearest thousand; it was publicly
disclosed without modification under
the Board’s disclosure regime. Although
HMDA has always required financial
institutions to report information about
the dollar amount of a financial
91 82

FR 44586, 44600–01 (Sept. 25, 2017).
at 44600 (describing the utility of
application date in light of HMDA’s purposes,
including helping the public and public officials to
identify possible discriminatory lending patterns
and enforce antidiscrimination statutes).
93 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(7).
94 FIG, supra note 55, at 81.
92 Id.

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institution’s mortgage lending activity,95
the Board amended Regulation C in
1989 to require reporting of loan amount
on a loan-level basis as part of its
implementation of FIRREA.96
Regulation C also requires financial
institutions to report the value of the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan.97 Financial
institutions must report the value they
relied on in making the credit decision,
such as an appraisal value or the
purchase price of the property.98
Property value must be reported in
numeric form reflecting the exact dollar
amount of the value the financial
institution relied on.99 The Bureau
added the requirement to report
property value the financial institution
relied on in the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
to implement the Dodd-Frank Act’s
amendment to HMDA providing for the
collection and reporting of the value of
the real property pledged or proposed to
be pledged as collateral.100
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA dataset disclosed to
the public by disclosing the midpoint
for the $10,000 interval into which the
reported loan amount or property value
falls instead of the exact value
reported.101 For example, for a reported
loan amount or property value of
$117,834, the Bureau would disclose
$115,000 as the midpoint between
values equal to $110,000 and less than
$120,000. The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing reported
loan amount and property value in the
loan-level HMDA data released to the
public would likely substantially
facilitate the re-identification of an
applicant or borrower and that this risk
would not be justified by the benefits of
the disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.102 The Bureau also proposed
to include an indicator of whether the
95 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Public Law 94–
200, sections 301–310, 89 Stat. 1124, 1125–28
(1975).
96 See 54 FR 51356 (Dec. 15, 1989).
97 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(28). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report property value for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
98 Comment 4(a)(28)–1.
99 FIG, supra note 55, at 104.
100 Dodd-Frank Act section 1094(3)(A)(iv), 12
U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(A).
101 82 FR 44586, 44601–02; 44607–08 (Sept. 25,
2017).
102 See id. at 44601, 44607 (describing the utility
of loan amount and property value in light of
HMDA’s purposes, including helping the public
and public officials to determine whether financial
institutions are serving the housing needs of their
communities, and to identify possible
discriminatory lending patterns and enforce
antidiscrimination statutes).

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reported loan amount exceeds the
applicable dollar amount limitation on
the original principal obligation in effect
at the time of application or origination
as provided under 12 U.S.C. 1717(b)(2)
and 12 U.S.C. 1454(a)(2) (GSE
conforming loan limit).103 The Bureau
sought comment on whether to add a
similar indicator for the applicable limit
for loans eligible for insurance by the
Federal Housing Administration (FHA
conforming loan limit).104
A few commenters opposed the
Bureau’s proposal to disclose loan
amount in $10,000 bins and asked the
Bureau to disclose more precise loan
amount values. A group of consumer
advocate commenters and an industry
commenter each recommended
disclosing loan amount rounded to the
nearest $1,000, like under the Board’s
disclosure regime. They asserted that
$10,000 bins would disproportionately
affect the utility of the data for smaller
loans. Conversely, an industry
commenter opposed the Bureau’s
proposal and asked the Bureau to
disclose less precise loan amount
values, stating that $10,000 bins would
insufficiently obscure the reported value
for larger loans, such as multifamily
loans, and thus would yield insufficient
protection against re-identification
relative to smaller loans. As with loan
amount, a few commenters urged the
Bureau to disclose more precise
property values, such as by rounding to
the nearest $1,000, while an industry
commenter supported disclosing less
precise values. An industry commenter
stated that property value, or the
property value derived from loan-tovalue ratio, could be matched to
publicly-available property or appraisal
records.
One industry commenter supported
the Bureau’s proposal to disclose loan
amount and property value in $10,000
bins because it believed these bins
would help prevent re-identification of
applicants and borrowers while
preserving much of the utility of these
data fields. A government agency
commenter supported the proposed GSE
103 The dollar amount limitation on the original
principal obligation as provided under 12 U.S.C.
1717(b)(2) and 12 U.S.C. 1454(a)(2) refers to the
annual maximum principal loan balance for a
mortgage acquired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
(the ‘‘GSEs’’). The FHFA is responsible for
determining the maximum conforming loan limits
for mortgages acquired by the GSEs. See Press
Release, Fed. Hous. Fin. Agency, FHFA Announces
Increase in Maximum Conforming Loan Limits for
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2017 (Nov. 23,
2016), available at https://www.fhfa.gov/Media/
PublicAffairs/Pages/FHFA-Announces-Increase-inMaximum-Conforming-Loan-Limits-for-Fannie-Maeand-Freddie-Mac-in-2017.aspx.
104 See 24 CFR 203.18 (providing maximum
amounts for eligible mortgages).

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conforming loan limit indicator because
the indicator would allow it to continue
using public HMDA data to identify the
market size for conforming loans for the
purpose of setting housing goals for its
regulated entities and to perform other
analyses related to the conforming loan
limit. Similarly, a group of consumer
advocate commenters supported the
proposed GSE conforming loan limit
flag. These commenters also
recommended adding a similar
indicator for the FHA conforming loan
limit, stating that analysis of loans
below the FHA conforming loan limit
was important for fair lending purposes.
The Bureau determines that
disclosing loan amount in $10,000
intervals will create a meaningful
reduction in record uniqueness in the
HMDA data when evaluating three data
fields that the Bureau concludes
contribute most to re-identification risk:
Loan amount, census tract, and lender
name. Although the Bureau recognizes
that disclosing loan amount in $10,000
intervals will reduce the utility of this
field compared to disclosing more
precise amounts, it believes it will still
allow users to rely on loan amount to
further HMDA’s purposes to some
degree. For example, $10,000 intervals
will still allow users to have some
understanding of the amount of credit
that financial institutions have made
available to consumers in certain
communities and the extent to which
such institutions are providing credit in
varying amounts.
The Bureau acknowledges that, as
commenters stated, $10,000 intervals
create a larger reduction in uniqueness
for small loan amounts—providing more
privacy protection and less data
utility—and a smaller reduction in
uniqueness for large loan amounts—
providing less privacy protection and
more data utility—relative to the
baseline reduction in uniqueness for all
loans in the dataset. To address the fact
that the proposed uniform binning
approach would not yield the same
balance of benefits and risks across all
loan amounts, the Bureau considered
whether it could apply bin sizes that
differed by reported loan amount. For
example, the Bureau could create bin
sizes that were a function of loan
amount, such as a percentage of the
reported value. However, this approach
may allow adversaries to determine the
precise loan amount by reversing the
function applied to the reported loan
amount value. The Bureau also
considered graduated bin sizes for
segments of loans. However, the larger
bin sizes in a graduated binning scheme
would disproportionately reduce the
utility of the data in more expensive

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geographic regions. Graduated bin sizes
also would more significantly impair
overall data utility compared to $10,000
bins, as users who wish to work with a
consistently binned dataset would have
to use the largest bin size for all loans.
Finally, identifying a basis upon which
to segment loan amount values into
different sized bins presents challenges.
In principle, the Bureau could analyze
the reported HMDA data annually and
determine segments based on the
distribution of loan amounts in a given
year to try to achieve more consistent
reduction in uniqueness across loans of
all sizes. In practice, however,
resubmissions and late submissions may
change the distribution of loan amounts,
creating a risk that the Bureau would
lack sufficient time to determine and
apply the appropriate bins before
disclosing the modified loan/
application registers.
Regarding an industry commenter’s
claim that property value could be
matched to public appraisal records and
could be derived from the loan-to-value
ratio, the Bureau notes that appraisal
records are not public, and the HMDA
data will not contain loan-to-value
ratio.105 However, the Bureau believes
that identified property tax records or
real estate transaction records may
contain values close enough to the
reported property value that property
value would substantially facilitate the
re-identification of a loan. Property
value was not required to be reported
prior to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule. The
Bureau nevertheless expects its
uniqueness to be similar to the
uniqueness of the values reported for
loan amount and believes that
disclosing property value in $10,000
intervals would create a meaningful
reduction in uniqueness. The Bureau
concludes that disclosing property value
in $10,000 intervals would still allow
data users to determine the general
values of properties for which financial
institutions are providing financing. As
with loan amount, the Bureau
considered approaches that would bin
property value in different intervals
depending on the reported value, but for
the reasons described above, the Bureau
is not adopting such approaches.
Disclosing property value in $10,000
intervals also reduces adversaries’
potential ability to use combined loanto-value ratio to derive the reported loan
amount. As mentioned above, the
Bureau intends to disclose without
modification combined loan-to-value
105 Unlike combined loan-to-value ratio, which
includes the total amount of all debt secured by the
property securing the loan reported, the loan-tovalue ratio includes only the amount of the reported
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ratio. Although both loan amount and
property value would likely
substantially facilitate re-identification,
the Bureau concludes that loan amount
will be easier to match to public records
where available, because public records
that contain the loan amount will likely
contain the exact loan amount reported
under HMDA. In contrast, the Bureau
concludes that financial institutions
will likely report the appraisal value as
the property value, and the appraisal
value is not publicly available.
However, even with property value
disclosed in $10,000 intervals, if the
reported combined loan-to-value ratio
for a particular transaction is actually
the loan-to-value ratio, the loan amount,
property value, and combined loan-tovalue ratio feasibly could be used to
narrow the possible values for loan
amount, thus decreasing the reduction
in record uniqueness relative to $10,000
intervals.106 The extent to which this
possible interaction could decrease the
benefits of binning loan amount is
uncertain. As an initial matter, under
the 2018 HMDA Final Rule, certain
small insured depository institutions
and insured credit unions will not be
required to report combined loan-tovalue ratio or property value, so the
interaction at issue will not be possible
for many loans. Moreover, the
percentage of transactions for which the
reported combined loan-to-value ratio
will equal the loan-to-value ratio will
vary based on market conditions, and
the Bureau believes that adversaries will
not be able to determine exactly when
the combined loan-to-value and loan-tovalue ratios are equal for a given
transaction. Finally, even if an
adversary could narrow for a particular
transaction the range of possible loan
amount values, the narrowed range may
not yield a record that is unique on the
data fields that most contribute to reidentification.
The Bureau proposed the GSE
conforming loan limit indicator to
facilitate the accuracy and transparency
of the FHFA Housing Goals program.107
FHFA has historically relied on public
HMDA data to set statutorily-required
housing goals for the GSEs to ensure the
GSEs and the public are aware of and
can provide feedback on FHFA’s
methodology. Binning loan amount as
proposed would significantly reduce the
accuracy of many calculations necessary
to set these goals and measure
performance, which hinge on
determining whether loans meet the
106 Similarly, an adversary could narrow the
possible values for property value.
107 12 CFR 1281.11 (bank housing goals); 12 CFR
1282.12 (GSE housing goals).

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GSE conforming loan limit. Although
FHFA could use non-public HMDA data
for modeling purposes, this would
result in FHFA, its regulated entities,
and the public working from different
datasets to evaluate the accuracy and
transparency of the FHFA Housing
Goals program.
In contrast to the GSE conforming
loan limit indicator, a FHA conforming
loan limit indicator would not serve a
similarly compelling purpose.
Disclosing loan amount in $10,000
intervals will sometimes reduce the
ability of the public to determine
whether a loan is at or above the FHA
conforming loan limit. However, no
commenter stated that the absence of
this information would impact the
FHA’s ability to perform statutorilyrequired functions. Additionally, no
commenter addressed the question of
whether factors not reflected in the
HMDA data would affect the accuracy of
a FHA conforming loan limit indicator,
and the Bureau remains concerned
about its ability to accurately produce
such an indicator using the HMDA data.
The Bureau intends to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by disclosing the midpoint for
the $10,000 interval into which the
reported loan amount or property value
falls, as proposed. The Bureau also
intends to indicate in the data disclosed
whether the reported loan amount
exceeds the GSE conforming loan
limit.108 For the reasons discussed
above and in the proposal, the Bureau
determines, based on the information
currently available to it, that these
modifications appropriately balance the
privacy risks that would likely be
created by the disclosure of these fields
and the benefits of such disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.
Action Taken Date
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the date of action
taken by the financial institution on a
covered loan or application.109 For
originated loans, this date is generally
the date of closing or the date of account
opening.110 Regulation C provides some
flexibility in reporting the date for other
types of actions taken, such as
applications denied, withdrawn, or
approved by the institution but not
accepted by the applicant. For example,
for applications approved but not
accepted, a financial institution may
108 The GSE conforming loan limit indicator will
be included in the annual loan-level disclosure of
all reported HMDA data combined, rather than in
the modified loan/application register for each
financial institution.
109 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(8)(ii).
110 Comment 4(a)(8)(ii)–5.

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report ‘‘any reasonable date, such as the
approval date, the deadline for
accepting the offer, or the date the file
was closed,’’ provided it adopts a
generally consistent approach.111 This
date is submitted by financial
institutions as the exact year, month,
and day, in the format of
YYYYMMDD.112 Financial institutions
were required to report this data field
prior to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule. As
with the application date, the Board
added the requirement to report the
action taken date as part of the
amendments to Regulation C that
implemented FIRREA.113 Under the
Board’s disclosure regime, action taken
date was excluded from the public
HMDA data.
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by continuing to exclude action
taken date.114 The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing action taken
date in the loan-level HMDA data
released to the public would likely
substantially facilitate the reidentification of an applicant or
borrower and that this risk would not be
justified by the benefits of the disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.115 A few
industry commenters supported the
Bureau’s proposal to continue to
exclude action taken date from the
HMDA data disclosed to the public.
The Bureau intends to exclude action
taken date from the public HMDA data,
as proposed. For the reasons discussed
above and in the proposal, the Bureau
determines, based on the information
currently available to it, that excluding
action taken date from the public
HMDA data appropriately balances the
privacy risks that may be created by the
disclosure of this field and the benefits
of such disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.
Property Address
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the address of the
property securing the loan or, in the
case of an application, proposed to
secure the loan.116 This address
corresponds to the property identified
on the legal obligation related to the
111 Comment

4(a)(8)(ii)–4.
supra note 55, at 81.
113 54 FR 51356, 51363 (Dec. 15, 1989).
114 82 FR 44586, 44602–03 (Sept. 25, 2017).
115 Id. at 44602 (describing the utility of action
taken date in light of HMDA’s purposes, including
helping the public and public officials to identify
possible discriminatory lending patterns and
enforce antidiscrimination statutes).
116 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(9)(i). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report property address for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
112 FIG,

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covered loan.117 The property address
reported by financial institutions
includes the street address, city name,
State name, and zip code.118 The Bureau
added the requirement to report
property address in the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule to implement the DoddFrank Act’s amendment to HMDA
providing for the collection and
reporting of, ‘‘as the Bureau may
determine to be appropriate, the parcel
number that corresponds to the real
property pledged or proposed to be
pledged as collateral.’’ 119
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding property
address.120 The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing property
address in the loan-level HMDA data
released to the public would likely
substantially facilitate the reidentification of an applicant or
borrower and that this risk would not be
justified by the benefits of the disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.121
A few industry commenters
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
exclude property address from the
public HMDA data. A group of
consumer advocate commenters
recommended that the Bureau disclose
a hashed value for each property
address in lieu of the property
address.122 According to these
commenters, disclosure of a hashed
value in place of property address
would help data users track ‘‘loan
flipping,’’ which these commenters
described as a predatory practice in
which lenders target borrowers for a
series of refinancings that increase the
borrower’s debt and strip equity. These
commenters did not address whether
the recommended hashed value should
be used in place of a particular property
address from year to year, i.e., every
time that the particular property address
is included in reported HMDA data.
117 Comment 4(a)(9)(i)–1. For applications that
did not result in an origination, the address
corresponds to the location of the property
proposed to secure the loan as identified by the
applicant. Id.
118 Comment 4(a)(9)(i)–2.
119 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(H).
120 82 FR 44586, 44603–04 (Sept. 25, 2017).
121 Id. at 44603 (describing the utility of property
address in light of HMDA’s purposes, including
helping the public and public officials to determine
whether financial institutions are serving the
housing needs of their communities and to identify
possible discriminatory lending patterns and
enforce antidiscrimination statutes).
122 A hashed value is a value generated by a
secure hash algorithm. A hash algorithm is
designed to be non-invertible, meaning that the
original value, in this case the reported property
address, could not be derived from the hashed
value.

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The Bureau declines to disclose a
hashed value in place of the property
address. The Bureau finds that a hashed
value used only within a particular
year’s HMDA data would have limited
value for studying loan flipping.
However, if a hashed value were carried
over from year to year, the Bureau is
concerned that, if one transaction
related to the property were reidentified, the hashed value could be
used to re-identify every loan secured
by the property in any other year’s
HMDA data. The Bureau also finds it
would be difficult to develop a hashing
algorithm that recognizes, with
certainty, if a reported property address
is unique, given slight differences in
how property addresses may be
reported.
The Bureau intends to exclude
property address from the public HMDA
data, as proposed. For the reasons
discussed above and in the proposal, the
Bureau determines, based on the
information currently available to it,
that excluding property address from
the public HMDA data appropriately
balances the privacy risks that may be
created by the disclosure of this field
and the benefits of such disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.

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Age
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the age of the
applicant or borrower.123 A financial
institution complies with this
requirement by reporting age, as of the
application date reported, as the number
of whole years derived from the date of
birth as shown on the application
form.124 The Bureau added the
requirement to report age in the 2015
HMDA Final Rule to implement the
Dodd-Frank Act’s amendment to HMDA
providing for the collection and
reporting of age.125
The Bureau proposed to disclose age
binned into the following ranges: 25 to
34; 35 to 44; 45 to 54; 55 to 64; and 65
to 74. The Bureau also proposed to
bottom-code age under 25 and to topcode age over 74.126 The Bureau
initially determined that disclosing
reported age in the public HMDA data
would likely disclose information about
the applicant or borrower that is not
otherwise public and may be harmful or
sensitive and that this risk would not be
justified by the benefits of the disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.127
123 12

CFR 1003.4(a)(10)(ii).
4(a)(1)(ii)–1.
125 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(4).
126 82 FR 44586, 44604 (Sept. 25, 2017).
127 Id. (describing the utility of age in light of
HMDA’s purposes, including helping the public
124 Comment

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The Bureau also proposed to indicate
whether a reported age is 62 or higher
to enhance the utility of the data for
identifying the particular fair lending
risks that may be posed with regard to
older populations.128 The Bureau
recognized that an effect of this
indicator would be to divide the 55 to
64 bin into two bins, 55 to 61 and 62
to 64. The Bureau sought comment on
whether, instead of binning age as
proposed and indicating whether a
reported age is 62 or higher, the Bureau
should disclose reported ages of 55 to 74
in ranges of 55 to 61 and 62 to 74.
An industry commenter expressed
support for the Bureau’s proposal to
modify reported age. A group of
consumer advocate commenters
expressed general support for the
Bureau’s proposal. These commenters
stated that applicant and borrower age
is vital for fair lending enforcement and
to identify potential unfair and
deceptive lending. These commenters
also stated that, in the years before the
2008 financial crisis, abusive lenders
targeted older adults, especially older
adults of color, and that abuses also
occurred in the reverse mortgage market
for adults over age 62. These
commenters expressed support for the
Bureau’s proposal to indicate whether a
reported age is 62 or higher. These
commenters also expressed a preference
for the proposed bins and indicator
approach to the alternative the Bureau
considered (binning reported ages of 55
to 74 in ranges of 55 to 61 and 62 to 74),
noting that the proposed bins would
provide more precise data with respect
to borrowers newly eligible for reverse
mortgages (i.e., 62- to 64-year old
borrowers). Finally, these commenters
asked the Bureau to top-code age at 84,
instead of 74. They stated that
Americans are living longer, and topcoding age at 84 would help the public
identify reverse mortgage and other
lending patterns affecting the oldest
seniors, including any fair lending or
affordability concerns.
An industry commenter expressed
opposition to the Bureau’s proposal and
recommended that the Bureau exclude
age entirely from the public HMDA
data. The commenter expressed concern
that disclosing age could facilitate reidentification of applicants and
and public officials to determine whether financial
institutions are serving the housing needs of their
communities and to identify possible
discriminatory lending patterns and enforce
antidiscrimination statutes).
128 Under Federal law, age 62 or higher is
considered to be older age for certain purposes. See,
e.g., 24 CFR 206.33 (concerning eligibility for a
home equity conversion mortgage); 12 CFR
1002.2(o) (defining ‘‘elderly’’ as 62 or older).

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borrowers and enable adversaries to
prey on vulnerable age groups.
The Bureau acknowledges the risks
identified by the industry commenter.
However, as explained in the proposal,
applicant or borrower age would assist
users in identifying possible
discriminatory lending patterns and
enforcing antidiscrimination statutes by
allowing users to examine potential age
discrimination in lending.129 Applicant
or borrower age would also assist in
determining whether financial
institutions are serving the housing
needs of their communities, including
the needs of various age cohorts.
The Bureau determines that
indicating whether the reported age is
62 or higher would provide the greater
utility identified by the commenters, as
compared to the alternative bins about
which the Bureau sought comment.
Additionally, this approach would
result in more consistent binning of the
data and would allow analysis of the
HMDA data in combination with data
found in other public data sources, such
as U.S. Census Bureau data, to further
HMDA’s purposes. The Bureau
determines that the difference in
privacy protection provided by the
proposed approach compared to the
alternative is minimal and is justified by
the benefits of the proposed approach.
Finally, the Bureau believes that topcoding age over 84 could allow greater
visibility into lending practices with
respect to the oldest consumers and
could further HMDA’s purposes:
Specifically, such disclosure could
permit the public and public officials to
better understand whether lenders are
serving the housing needs of the oldest
seniors of their communities and to
observe lending patterns relating to such
consumers, a typically fixed-income
population that is engaging in increased
dwelling-secured borrowing with
respect to which there is little public
data currently available. However, the
Bureau believes this approach also
could increase privacy risk. The Bureau
believes the reported HMDA data likely
will not include significant numbers of
records for applicants and borrowers
over age 84, which could pose reidentification risk. Thus, the harm and
sensitivity risks identified in the
proposal may be heightened to the
extent that adversaries could re-identify
the oldest borrowers. Based on the
information currently available to it, in
light of the potential risks and benefits
of this approach, the Bureau determines
not to top-code age over 84.
The Bureau intends to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
129 See

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public by disclosing age binned into the
following ranges: 25 to 34; 35 to 44; 45
to 54; 55 to 64; and 65 to 74, as
proposed. The Bureau also intends to
bottom-code age under 25 and to topcode age over 74. Finally, the Bureau
intends to indicate whether reported age
is 62 or higher. For the reasons
discussed above and in more detail in
the proposal, the Bureau determines,
based on the information currently
available to it, that these modifications
appropriately balance the privacy risks
that would likely be created by the
disclosure of this field and the benefits
of such disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.
Credit Score

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Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report, except for
purchased covered loans, the credit
score or scores relied on in making the
credit decision and the name and
version of the scoring model used to
generate each credit score.130 It also
provides that, for purposes of this
requirement, ‘‘credit score’’ has the
meaning set forth in section 609(f)(2)(A)
of the Fair Credit Reporting Act
(FCRA).131 Financial institutions must
report credit score as a numeric field,
e.g., 650.132 Financial institutions must
also report a code from a specified list
to indicate the name and version of the
scoring model used to generate each
credit score reported.133 The Bureau
added the requirement to report these
data in the 2015 HMDA Final Rule to
implement the Dodd-Frank Act’s
amendment to HMDA providing for the
collection and reporting of ‘‘the credit
score of mortgage applicants and
mortgagors, in such form as the Bureau
may prescribe.’’ 134
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding credit score.135 The
Bureau initially determined that
disclosing credit score in the loan-level
HMDA data released to the public
would likely disclose information about
the applicant or borrower that is not
otherwise public and may be harmful or
sensitive and that this risk would not be
justified by the benefits of the disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.136
130 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(15)(i). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report credit score for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
131 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(15)(ii).
132 FIG, supra note 55, at 94–95.
133 Id. at 95–96.
134 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(I).
135 82 FR 44586, 44604–06 (Sept. 25, 2017).
136 Id. at 44605 (describing the utility of credit
score in light of HMDA’s purposes, including

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A few industry commenters
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
exclude credit score from the public
HMDA data. Another industry
commenter opposed the Bureau’s
proposal to exclude credit score. The
commenter stated that it would be
extremely difficult to re-identify
applicants or borrowers using this data
field because credit scores are not
publicly available, and that sensitivity
alone should not be a basis for
withholding data from the public where
re-identification risk is low. The
commenter stated further that credit
scores are critically important in
identifying possible discriminatory
lending patterns, enforcing
antidiscrimination statutes, and
determining whether financial
institutions are serving the housing
needs of their communities, because
they are an important factor in financial
institutions’ underwriting decisions.
A group of consumer advocate
commenters also opposed the Bureau’s
proposal to exclude credit score. These
commenters stated that credit scores are
essential in fair lending analysis
because they help determine whether
similarly situated applicants are treated
differently solely due to their race or
gender. The commenters recommended
that, to address the privacy concerns
identified by the Bureau, the Bureau
‘‘normalize’’ reported credit scores
before disclosure to the public. The
commenters suggested that the Bureau
either disclose credit scores: (1) As
‘‘z-scores,’’ which the commenters
described as ‘‘a measure of a credit
score’s place in the overall distribution
of credit scores for loan applicants that
year,’’ or (2) in ‘‘percentile ranges based
on the distribution of loan applicants’
credit scores.’’ The commenters also
recommended that, if the Bureau
excludes credit score from the public
HMDA data, the Bureau disclose credit
scores in aggregate form by census tract,
for all lenders and for each lender.
According to the commenters, this
information would help the public
assess whether the industry as a whole
or individual lenders are treating
similarly situated neighborhoods
differently due to the racial, ethnic,
income, or age composition of the
neighborhood.
The Bureau finds that the industry
commenter underestimates the reidentification risk associated with the
HMDA data, even modified as proposed,
and that, where re-identification risk is
helping the public and public officials to determine
whether financial institutions are serving the
housing needs of their communities and to identify
possible discriminatory lending patterns and
enforce antidiscrimination statutes).

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present, sensitivity alone is a basis for
modification under the balancing test.
The Bureau declines to adopt the
consumer advocate commenters’
recommendation that the Bureau
normalize the credit score data and
disclose the normalized data. The
Bureau finds that this alternative would
not reduce privacy risks to the point
that they would be justified by the
disclosure benefits. Disclosure of a
normalized credit score would reflect
the applicant’s or borrower’s reported
credit score in relation to all other
applicants and borrowers in a particular
year’s HMDA data. Thus, the Bureau
believes that, if the HMDA data were reidentified, disclosure of this information
would likely create a risk of harm or
sensitivity similar to the risk created by
disclosure of reported credit score.137
The Bureau intends to exclude credit
score from the public HMDA data, as
proposed. For the reasons discussed
above and in the proposal, the Bureau
determines, based on the information
currently available to it, that excluding
credit score from the public HMDA data
appropriately balances the privacy risks
that may be created by the disclosure of
this field and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
Debt-to-Income Ratio
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report, except for
purchased covered loans, the ratio of the
applicant’s or borrower’s total monthly
debt to the total monthly income relied
on in making the credit decision (debtto-income ratio).138 The debt-to-income
ratio must be reported as a
percentage.139 The Bureau added the
requirement to report debt-to-income
ratio in the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
using its discretionary authority
provided by the Dodd-Frank Act’s
amendment to HMDA to require the
reporting of ‘‘such other information as
the Bureau may require.’’ 140
The Bureau proposed to disclose
reported debt-to-income ratio of greater
than or equal to 40 percent and less than
50 percent.141 The Bureau also proposed
to bin reported debt-to-income ratio
137 Regarding the consumer advocate
commenters’ recommendation that the Bureau
disclose credit scores in aggregate form, the Bureau
will consider, as it does in the ordinary course of
its business, whether to make additional
information related to mortgage lending available to
the public.
138 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(23). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report debt-to-income ratio for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
139 FIG, supra note 55, at 101.
140 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(J).
141 82 FR 44586, 44606–07 (Sept. 25, 2017).

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values into the following ranges: 20
percent to less than 30 percent; 30
percent to less than 40 percent; and 50
percent to less than 60 percent. In
addition, the Bureau proposed to
bottom-code reported debt-to-income
ratio values under 20 percent and to
top-code reported debt-to-income ratios
of 60 percent or higher. The Bureau
initially determined that disclosing
reported debt-to-income ratio would
likely disclose information about the
applicant or borrower that is not
otherwise public and may be harmful or
sensitive and that, for certain debt-toincome ratio values, this risk would not
be justified by the benefits of the
disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.142
The Bureau also initially determined
that, for many financial institutions,
debt-to-income ratio of 36 percent
serves as an internal underwriting
benchmark, so that the ability to
identify whether an applicant’s debt-toincome ratio is above or below this
value would help users analyzing
lending patterns to control for factors
that might provide a legitimate
explanation for disparities in credit or
pricing decisions. The Bureau sought
comment on whether the benefits of
disclosing more granular information
concerning debt-to-income ratio values
at or around 36 percent would justify
the risks to applicant and borrower
privacy such disclosure would likely
create, and how such information
should be disclosed.
An industry commenter expressed
support for the Bureau’s proposed
treatment of debt-to-income ratio. A
group of consumer advocate
commenters expressed general support
for the Bureau’s proposal and also urged
the Bureau to adopt more granular
disclosure of debt-to-income ratio
values near 36 percent, agreeing with
the Bureau that 36 percent is a common
underwriting benchmark. An industry
commenter expressed opposition to the
Bureau’s proposal to bin debt-to-income
ratio values into ranges, arguing that the
Bureau should disclose debt-to-income
ratio without modification. According to
the commenter, binning reduces the
utility of the data, thereby hampering
understanding of lending practices. The
commenter added that misuse of the
data would be ‘‘almost impossible’’
because, if property address were not
disclosed, as the Bureau proposed, re142 See id. at 44606 (describing the utility of debtto-income ratio in light of HMDA’s purposes,
including helping the public and public officials to
determine whether financial institutions are serving
the housing needs of their communities and to
identify possible discriminatory lending patterns
and enforce antidiscrimination statutes).

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identification of applicants and
borrowers would be extremely difficult.
The Bureau finds that the industry
commenter underestimates the reidentification risk associated with the
HMDA data, even modified as proposed.
The Bureau determines that the
existence of various regulatory,
guarantor, and investment program
benchmarks justifies disclosing exact
debt-to-income ratio values between 40
and 50 percent, for the reasons set forth
in more detail in the proposal.143
Further, based on the comment from a
group of consumer advocates and
further analysis, the Bureau finds that a
36 percent debt-to-income ratio serves
as an internal underwriting benchmark
for many lenders. The ability to identify
whether an applicant’s debt-to-income
ratio is at or above this level therefore
also would help data users control for
factors that might provide a legitimate
explanation for disparities in credit and
pricing decisions. The Bureau
determines that the best way to allow
users to determine whether a value is at
or above this benchmark is to extend the
range of debt-to-income values
disclosed without modification from
‘‘greater than or equal to 40 percent and
less than 50 percent’’ to ‘‘greater than or
equal to 36 percent and less than 50
percent.’’ The Bureau believes that the
modifications the Bureau intends to
apply will reduce the privacy risks
created by the public disclosure of debtto-income ratio while preserving much
of the benefits of the data field.
The Bureau intends to disclose debtto-income ratio as proposed, except that
it intends to disclose without
modification debt-to-income ratio
values greater than or equal to 36
percent and less than 50 percent instead
of greater than or equal to 40 percent
and less than 50 percent. The Bureau
intends to bin reported debt-to-income
ratio values into the following ranges:
20 percent to less than 30 percent; 30
percent to less than 36 percent; and 50
percent to less than 60 percent. The
Bureau also intends to bottom-code
reported debt-to-income ratio values
under 20 percent and to top-code
reported debt-to-income ratios of 60
percent or higher. For the reasons
discussed above and in the proposal, the
Bureau determines, based on the
information currently available to it,
that the disclosure of reported debt-toincome ratio values greater than or
equal to 36 percent and less than 50
percent, and the modifications it
intends to apply to other reported debtto-income ratio values, appropriately
balance the privacy risks that would
143 See

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likely be created by the disclosure of
this field and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
Total Units and Affordable Units
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the total number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan (total
units).144 Regulation C also requires
financial institutions to report, for
properties that include multifamily
dwellings, the number of affordable
units related to the property. The rule
defines affordable units as individual
dwelling units related to the property
that are income-restricted pursuant to
Federal, State, or local affordable
housing programs.145 The rule defines
‘‘multifamily dwelling’’ as a dwelling,
regardless of construction method, that
contains five or more individual
dwelling units.146
The total units and affordable units
data fields were not reported fields prior
to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule; the
Bureau added them to the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule using its discretionary
authority provided by the Dodd-Frank
Act’s amendment to HMDA to require
the reporting of ‘‘such other information
as the Bureau may require.’’ 147 Prior to
the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, however,
data users could determine whether a
property was a multifamily property,
because the ‘‘property type’’ data field—
which was eliminated under the 2015
HMDA Final Rule—included a code for
‘‘multifamily.’’ Property type was
disclosed to the public without
modification under the Board’s
disclosure regime.
The Bureau proposed to disclose
these data fields to the public as
reported.148 The Bureau initially
determined that disclosing these data
fields would likely present low risk to
applicant and borrower privacy, and, to
the extent that disclosing these fields
would create risk to applicant and
borrower privacy, that the risks would
144 12

CFR 1003.4(a)(31).
CFR 1003.4(a)(32). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report affordable units for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
146 12 CFR 1003.2(n). Under Regulation C, a
covered loan is secured by a multifamily dwelling
if it is secured by the entire multifamily dwelling;
thus, a loan to purchase an entire apartment
building or condominium building would be a loan
secured by a multifamily dwelling, while a loan to
purchase an individual condominium in that
building would not be. Comment 2(n)–3.
147 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(J).
148 82 FR 44586, 44597–99 (Sept. 25, 2017).
145 12

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be justified by the benefits of disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.149
Several consumer advocate
commenters supported the Bureau’s
proposal to disclose without
modification these data fields. One
consumer advocate commenter stated
that multifamily loan data, in general,
would help the public assess how
lending practices affect low- and
moderate-income tenants. This
commenter also stated that data on total
units would help data users determine
how many households are affected by a
loan and that the data on affordable
units would provide valuable
information about the financing of
affordable housing.
An industry commenter opposed the
proposal to disclose total units and
affordable units for multifamily loans.
This commenter stated that disclosure
of this data for multifamily loans would
create a heightened risk of reidentification, because the number of
units and number of affordable units
can vary widely across multifamily
properties and therefore may allow
identification of specific properties. The
commenter requested that, for
multifamily loans only, the Bureau
exclude these data fields from the
publicly available HMDA data if the
relevant geographic area does not
include enough multifamily loans to
protect against re-identification,
although the commenter did not specify
the minimum number of loans
necessary to do so. The commenter
further recommended that, if there is a
sufficient number of multifamily loans
to protect against re-identification, the
Bureau should disclose total units
binned into ranges—the commenter
suggested bins of 5 to 49 and 50 and
above—and disclose the value reported
for the number of affordable units as a
percentage of the number of total units.
Based on these comments and the
additional analysis described below in
this paragraph, the Bureau believes that
disclosing without modification
reported values for total units of 5 and
above in the loan-level HMDA data
would likely substantially facilitate the
re-identification of applicants or
borrowers and that this risk would not
be justified by the benefits of disclosure.

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149 Id.

at 44598 (describing in light of HMDA’s
purposes the utility of total units and affordable
units—along with the other data fields that the
Bureau proposed to disclose without modification
on the basis that they present low privacy risk—
including helping the public and public officials to
determine whether financial institutions are serving
the housing needs of their communities, to
distribute public-sector investment so as to attract
private investment to areas where it is needed, and
to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns
and enforce antidiscrimination statutes).

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The Bureau determines that multifamily
loans are somewhat more unique than
other loans in the data and that, in many
cases, an adversary could match the
reported total units for multifamily
loans with publicly available
information about the number of units
in a multifamily property, because this
information is widely available to the
public from sources including public
records and real estate websites.
For these reasons, the Bureau intends
to modify the loan-level HMDA data
disclosed to the public so that total
units are binned into the following
ranges: 5 to 24; 25 to 49; 50 to 99; 100
to 149; and 150 and over. The Bureau
further determines that these
modifications will reduce reidentification risk while preserving
much of the benefit from disclosing this
field, as data users will still be able to
approximate with some precision how
many units a particular transaction
affects. Additionally, under the Bureau’s
approach, the bins for total units will
align with the bins used by HUD’s
Rental Housing Finance Survey—the
preeminent Federal data source on
rental housing finance characteristics—
allowing users to analyze HMDA data in
combination with data from that survey
to further HMDA’s purposes. The
Bureau determines, based on the
information currently available to it,
that these modifications appropriately
balance the privacy risks that would
likely be created by the disclosure of
this field and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
The Bureau declines to adopt the bins
suggested by the commenter—5 to 49
and 50 and over—because the Bureau
concludes that these bins would provide
insufficient precision regarding the
number of housing units a transaction
affects. The Bureau believes that the
bins it is adopting better balance the
privacy risks and disclosure benefits
associated with the disclosure of this
field.
The Bureau determines that
disclosure in the loan-level HMDA data
of affordable units creates minimal risk,
if any, of substantially facilitating the reidentification of applicants and
borrowers in the HMDA data. However,
it determines that, under certain
circumstances, disclosure without
modification of affordable units would
undermine the privacy protection that
binning total units achieves and that
this risk is not justified by the benefits
of disclosure. To reduce this risk, the
Bureau intends to disclose affordable
units as a percentage of the value
reported for total units, rounded to the
nearest whole number. The Bureau
determines that this modification

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appropriately balances the privacy risks
that would likely be created by the
disclosure of this field and the benefits
of such disclosure in light of HMDA’s
purposes.
Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System
and Registry Identifier
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to report the unique
identifier the Nationwide Mortgage
Licensing System and Registry (NMLSR
ID) assigned to the mortgage loan
originator, as defined in Regulation G,
12 CFR 1007.102, or Regulation H, 12
CFR 1008.23, as applicable.150 The
NMLSR ID must be reported in numeric
form, such as 123450.151 In the 2015
HMDA Final Rule, the Bureau added the
requirement to report the NMLSR ID to
implement the Dodd-Frank Act’s
requirement that financial institutions
report, ‘‘as the Bureau may determine to
be appropriate, a unique identifier that
identifies the loan originator as set forth
in section 1503 of the [Secure and Fair
Enforcement for] Mortgage Licensing
Act of 2008.’’ 152
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding the NMLSR ID.153
The Bureau initially determined that
disclosing the NMLSR ID in the loanlevel HMDA data released to the public
would likely substantially facilitate the
re-identification of an applicant or
borrower and that this risk would not be
justified by the benefits of the disclosure
in light of HMDA’s purposes.154
Several industry commenters and a
group of consumer advocate
commenters expressed support for the
Bureau’s proposal to exclude the
NMLSR ID. The consumer advocate
commenters also recommended that, in
place of the NMLSR ID for the
individual mortgage loan originator, the
Bureau disclose the applicable NMLSR
ID for the loan originator’s company or
branch. According to these commenters,
disclosing the company or branch
identifier would eliminate reidentification risk while helping data
users assess the practices of mortgage
brokers in the mortgage lending market,
which these commenters described as a
critical but hidden facet of the market.
150 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(34). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report NMLSR ID for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
151 FIG, supra note 55, at 107–08.
152 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(F).
153 82 FR 44586, 44608–09 (Sept. 25, 2017).
154 See id. (describing the utility of NMLSR ID in
light of HMDA’s purposes, including helping the
public and public officials to identify possible
discriminatory lending patterns and enforcing
antidiscrimination statutes).

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The Bureau does not intend to
disclose the NMLSR ID for the loan
originator’s company or branch as some
commenters suggested. As discussed in
the proposal, the Bureau believes the
NMLSR ID for a loan originator would
substantially facilitate re-identification
of the HMDA data because it is required
to appear on various documents
associated with the loan, including the
security instrument, and many
jurisdictions publicly disclose these real
estate transaction records in an
identified form.155 For companies or
branches with small numbers of
mortgage loan originators, disclosing the
company or branch identifier may allow
adversaries to narrow the potential
mortgage loan originator NMLSR IDs for
the loan, which would create similar reidentification concerns. Further, the
HMDA data reported to the Bureau will
not contain the NMLSR ID for the loan
originator’s company or branch. Because
mortgage loan originators may work out
of multiple branches, assigning the
correct branch identifier may not be
possible.
The Bureau intends to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding the NMLSR ID, as
proposed. For the reasons discussed
above and in more detail in the
proposal, the Bureau determines, based
on the information currently available to
it, that this modification appropriately
balances the privacy risks that would
likely be created by the disclosure of
this field and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.
Automated Underwriting System Result
Regulation C requires that, except for
purchased covered loans, financial
institutions report ‘‘the name of the
automated underwriting system used by
the financial institution to evaluate the
application and the result generated by
that automated underwriting
system.’’ 156 Regulation C defines
‘‘automated underwriting system’’ for
the purposes of this requirement as ‘‘an
electronic tool developed by a
securitizer, Federal government insurer,
or Federal government guarantor . . .
that provides a result regarding the
credit risk of the applicant and whether
the covered loan is eligible to be
originated, purchased, insured, or
guaranteed by that securitizer, Federal
government insurer, or Federal
government guarantor.’’ 157 Financial
155 Id.
156 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(35)(i). Insured depository
institutions and insured credit unions are not
required to report these data fields for loans or
applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
157 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(35)(ii).

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institutions report a code from a
specified list to indicate the result or
results generated by the AUS or AUSs
used.158 Financial institutions may
report up to five AUS names and five
AUS results.159 The Bureau added these
requirements in the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule using its discretionary authority
provided by the Dodd-Frank Act’s
amendment to HMDA to require the
reporting of ‘‘such other information as
the Bureau may require.’’ 160
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding AUS result.161 The
Bureau initially determined that
disclosing AUS result in the public
HMDA data would likely disclose
information about the applicant or
borrower that is not otherwise public
and may be harmful or sensitive and
that this risk would not be justified by
the benefits of the disclosure in light of
HMDA’s purposes.162
A few industry commenters
supported the Bureau’s proposal to
exclude AUS result from the public
HMDA data. Two AUS owner
commenters also supported the Bureau’s
proposal to exclude AUS result,
agreeing with the Bureau’s assessment
that AUS results are sensitive. These
commenters also incorporated by
reference comments they submitted in
connection with the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule in which they expressed concern
that AUS result could be used to
reverse-engineer proprietary
information about how AUSs are
designed.
A group of consumer advocate
commenters opposed the Bureau’s
proposal to exclude AUS result. The
commenters disagreed with the Bureau’s
assessment that the benefits of
disclosing AUS result do not justify the
privacy risks that may be created by
such disclosure. The commenters stated
that AUS result can aid significantly in
fair lending analysis by helping data
users determine whether similarly
situated borrowers were treated
158 FIG, supra note 55, at 109–10. AUS result is
reported using the following codes: Code 1—
Approve/Eligible; Code 2—Approve/Ineligible;
Code 3—Refer/Eligible; Code 4—Refer/Ineligible;
Code 5—Refer with Caution; Code 6—Out of Scope;
Code 7—Error; Code 8—Accept; Code 9—Caution;
Code 10—Ineligible; Code 11—Incomplete; Code
12—Invalid; Code 13—Refer; Code 14—Eligible;
Code 15—Unable to Determine or Unknown; Code
16—Other; Code 17—Not applicable; Code 1111—
Exempt. Id.
159 Comment 4(a)(35)–3.iv.
160 12 U.S.C. 2803(b)(6)(J).
161 82 FR 44586, 44609 (Sept. 25, 2017).
162 Id. (describing the utility of AUS result in light
of HMDA’s purposes, including helping the public
and public officials to identify possible
discriminatory lending patterns and enforce
antidiscrimination statutes).

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differently due to race, gender, or age.
The commenters also stated that the
codes for AUS result—such as
‘‘Approve/Ineligible,’’ ‘‘Ineligible,’’ or
‘‘Incomplete’’—would not reflect any
more negatively on applicants than the
fact of a loan application denial.163 An
industry commenter also opposed the
Bureau’s proposal. The commenter
stated that it would be extremely
difficult to re-identify applicants or
borrowers using AUS result because it is
not available in other public databases,
and that sensitivity alone should not be
a basis for withholding data from the
public where re-identification risk is
low. The commenter stated further that
AUS result is critically important in
identifying possible discriminatory
lending patterns, enforcing
antidiscrimination statutes,
understanding lenders’ underwriting
decisions, and determining whether
financial institutions are serving the
housing needs of their communities.
The Bureau determines that
disclosing AUS result in the public
HMDA data would likely disclose
information about the applicant or
borrower that is not otherwise public
and may be harmful or sensitive. The
Bureau finds that the industry
commenter that opposed the Bureau’s
proposal underestimated the reidentification risk associated with the
HMDA data, even modified as proposed,
and that, where re-identification risk is
present, sensitivity alone is a basis for
modification under the balancing test.
The Bureau further finds that the
consumer advocate commenters
understated the sensitivity of AUS
result data. As the Bureau explained in
the proposal, if a HMDA record were
associated with an identified applicant
or borrower, disclosure of a ‘‘negative’’
AUS result would reveal information
that would likely be perceived as
reflecting negatively on the applicant’s
or borrower’s willingness or ability to
pay.164 Most consumers would consider
such information sensitive and
disclosure of this information could
lead to dignity harm or embarrassment.
The Bureau also determines that scam
artists and other bad actors could use
this field to target marketing to
applicants or borrowers to try to take
advantage of vulnerable consumers. The
Bureau determines these privacy risks
are not justified by the benefits of
disclosure.
163 As noted above, the Bureau proposed to
disclose data on the action taken by the financial
institution—which includes information that a
consumer’s application was denied—without
modification. Id. at 44597–99.
164 Id. at 44609.

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The Bureau intends to exclude AUS
result from the public HMDA data, as
proposed. For the reasons discussed
above and in the proposal, the Bureau
determines, based on the information
currently available to it, that excluding
AUS result from the public HMDA data
appropriately balances the privacy risks
that may be created by the disclosure of
this field and the benefits of such
disclosure in light of HMDA’s purposes.

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Free-Form Text Fields
Regulation C requires financial
institutions to use free-form text fields
to report certain data. Free-form text
fields are unique in the HMDA data
reported to the Bureau because they
allow the reporting of any information,
rather than certain specified types of
numbers or codes. Free-form text fields
must be used to report the name and
version of the credit scoring model
used, reasons for denial, AUS system
name, and AUS result where the
financial institution reports a code
indicating that a non-listed value
applies, and the fields may also be used
to report certain ethnicity and race
information, if provided by the
applicant or borrower.165 Free-form text
fields used to report race and ethnicity
must be completed by applicants; all
other free-form text fields must be
completed by the financial
institution.166 The maximum number of
characters for the AUS system name,
AUS result, and reasons for denial freeform text fields, including spaces, is
255; the maximum number of characters
including spaces for all other free-form
text fields is 100.167
The Bureau proposed to modify the
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public by excluding these free-form text
fields.168 The Bureau initially
determined that free-form text fields
would allow the reporting of any
information, including information that
creates risks to applicant and borrower
privacy, and that, given the amount of
HMDA data reported each year, it would
not be feasible for the Bureau to review
the contents of each free-form text field
submitted before disclosing the loanlevel HMDA data to the public. The
Bureau initially determined that
excluding free-form text fields is a
modification to the public loan-level
165 See FIG, supra note 55, at 85–86 (ethnicity),
88–89 (race), 96 (name and version of credit scoring
model used), 98 (reasons for denial), 108–09 (AUS
system name), and 110 (AUS result). Insured
depository institutions and insured credit unions
are not required to report these data fields for loans
or applications that are partially exempt under the
EGRRCPA. See 83 FR 45325, 45329 (Sept. 7, 2018).
166 Id.
167 Id.
168 82 FR 44586, 44609–10 (Sept. 25, 2017).

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HMDA data that appropriately balances
the risks to applicant and borrower
privacy and the benefits of disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.169
Two industry commenters supported
the Bureau’s proposal to exclude freeform text fields. A group of consumer
advocate commenters requested that the
Bureau clarify that financial institutions
cannot use the free-form text field to
report a reason for denial if the reason
for denial can be reported using an
available code.
The Bureau intends to exclude freeform text fields from the public HMDA
data, as proposed. For the reasons
discussed above and in the proposal, the
Bureau determines, based on the
information currently available to it,
that excluding free-form text fields from
the public HMDA data appropriately
balances the privacy risks that may be
created by the disclosure of this field
and the benefits of such disclosure in
light of HMDA’s purposes.170
Inclusion of Multifamily Loan Data
One industry commenter
recommended that the Bureau not
disclose any loan-level data concerning
loans secured by multifamily dwellings.
The commenter stated that all data
reported for these applications and
loans should be excluded from the loanlevel data made available to the public
because HMDA’s principal focus is
single-family consumer-purpose
mortgage transactions; the data required
to be reported are inapplicable to
multifamily loans; and multifamily
lending differs from consumer-purpose
single-family lending (e.g., because
different criteria is considered in
underwriting).
The Bureau declines to categorically
exclude multifamily loan data from the
public HMDA data. As noted above,
HMDA requires that HMDA data be
made available to the public except as
the Bureau determines necessary to
protect applicant and borrower privacy
interests.171 Because the Bureau
determines that most of the HMDA data
create low, if any, privacy risk, and that
any risks are justified by the benefits in
169 Id.
170 The consumer advocate commenters’ request
seeks clarification about a matter unrelated to the
subject of this final policy guidance, which is the
disclosure of loan-level HMDA data. For
information about how reasons for denial should be
reported, see 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(16), Comment
4(a)(16)–1 through –4, and the FIG, supra note 55,
at 96–98.
171 See supra note 18 and accompanying text; part
IV.A (responding to comments suggesting that the
Bureau exclude from the public data or disclose
only in aggregate form all HMDA data or all new
data required to be reported under the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule).

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light of HMDA’s purposes, excluding all
multifamily loan data would be
inconsistent with the statute and the
balancing test. In addition, multifamily
loans have always been included in the
public HMDA data and Regulation C
exempts lenders, on a data field-by-data
field basis, from reporting data that is
inapplicable to multifamily loans.
Further, the Bureau concludes that the
differences between single-family and
multifamily loans do not reduce the
value of public multifamily loan data for
advancing HMDA’s purposes, especially
considering that multifamily housing is
a vital component of the nation’s
housing stock.
C. Other Comments Received
Additional Data
Prior to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule,
Regulation C required financial
institutions to report the location of the
property to which the loan or
application relates, by MSA or by
Metropolitan Division, by State, by
county, and by census tract, if the
institution has a home or branch office
in that MSA or Metropolitan Division.
To reduce burden on financial
institutions, the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
eliminated from this provision the
requirement to report the MSA or
Metropolitan Division in which the
property is located.172 The Bureau
proposed to identify in the public data,
for each loan and application that
would have been subject to this
provision prior to the 2015 HMDA Final
Rule, the MSA or Metropolitan Division
in which the property securing or
proposed to secure the loan is located.
The Bureau received no comments on
this proposal. For each loan and
application with respect to which the
financial institution reports property
location information, the Bureau
intends to identify in the public data the
applicable MSA or Metropolitan
Division.173
The FFIEC has historically included
with its annual loan-level disclosure of
all reported HMDA data the following
census and income data: (1) Population
(total population in tract); (2) Minority
Population Percent (percentage of
minority population to total population
for tract, carried to two decimal places);
(3) FFIEC Median Family Income
(FFIEC Median family income in dollars
for the MSA/MD in which the tract is
172 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(9)(ii) (effective Jan. 1, 2018);
80 FR 66128, 66187 (Oct. 28, 2015).
173 If applicable, the MSA or Metropolitan
Division will be included in the annual loan-level
disclosure of all reported HMDA data combined,
rather than in the modified loan/application register
for each financial institution.

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located (adjusted annually by FFIEC));
(4) Tract to MSA/MD Median Family
Income Percentage (percentage of tract
median family income compared to
MSA/MD median family income,
carried to two decimal places); (5)
Number of Owner Occupied Units
(number of dwellings, including
individual condominiums, that are lived
in by the owner); and (6) Number of 1to 4-Family units (dwellings that are
built to house fewer than five families).
These data are intended to provide
additional context to the reported
HMDA data. The Bureau proposed to
continue to include these data in the
combined loan-level HMDA data
disclosed to the public.
A group of consumer advocate
commenters supported the proposal to
continue to include the census and
income data the FFIEC historically has
included with its annual loan-level
disclosure of all reported HMDA data.
These commenters stated that the
Minority Population Percent data can be
incomplete as a demographic indicator
and that disclosing the percentages of
African-American and Hispanic
populations separately would allow for
a more accurate picture of the
experience of geographic areas and
neighborhoods in lending markets.
These commenters also stated that,
although neighborhoods with
predominantly Asian residents are
currently not as widespread as
predominantly Hispanic and AfricanAmerican neighborhoods, adding the
percentage of Asians living in each
census tract would be valuable in some
major markets.
The Bureau intends that the census
and income data historically included
with the annual loan-level disclosure of
all reported HMDA continues to be
included with this disclosure. The
Bureau will consider whether to
recommend that the FFIEC add to these
data the more granular minority
population percentage data the
consumer advocate commenters
requested. Issuance of this final policy
guidance does not require that a
determination be made concerning the
addition of the more granular data to the
FFIEC’s annual loan-level disclosure.
The FFIEC historically also has
included with its annual loan-level
disclosure of all reported HMDA an
application date indicator reflecting
whether the application date was before
January 1, 2004, on or after January 1,
2004, or not available. The Bureau
stated in the proposal that it believed
the application date indicator for preand post-January 2004 is no longer
useful to the analysis of the HMDA data
and therefore proposed to no longer

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include the indicator in the combined
loan-level HMDA data disclosed to the
public. The Bureau received no
comments concerning the application
date indicator. The Bureau intends that
the application date indicator
historically included with the annual
loan-level disclosure of all reported
HMDA data is no longer included with
this disclosure.
Restricted Access Program
The Bureau stated in the proposal
that, as it had previously indicated in
the supplementary information to the
2015 HMDA Final Rule, it believed
HMDA’s public disclosure purposes
may be furthered by allowing industry
and community researchers and
academics to access the unmodified
HMDA data through a restricted access
program, for research purposes. The
Bureau did not propose to establish a
restricted access program but rather
stated in the proposal that it continued
to evaluate whether access to
unmodified HMDA data should be
permitted through such a program, the
options for such a program, and the
risks and costs that may be associated
with such a program.
Two industry commenters expressed
concerns that such a program would
create risk that the data would be
misused or subject to a data breach. A
group of consumer advocate
commenters supported such a program
and offered specific suggestions
concerning how it should be structured.
The Bureau will take these comments
into consideration as it continues to
evaluate access to unmodified HMDA
data through a restricted access
program. Issuance of this final policy
guidance does not require that a
determination be made concerning a
restricted access program.
Legislative Rulemaking
A group of industry commenters
asserted that HMDA requires the Bureau
to use a legislative rulemaking under the
APA, rather than policy guidance, to
identify the modifications to be applied
to the loan-level HMDA data before it is
disclosed to the public and suggested
that the Bureau delay public disclosure
of the data until such rulemaking is
complete. Another industry commenter
expressed concern that the Bureau did
not use a rulemaking to determine the
HMDA data to be disclosed to the public
and stated that the Bureau should not
disclose any new HMDA data until such
a rulemaking is undertaken.
The Bureau determines that its
adoption of the balancing test in the
2015 HMDA Final Rule satisfies its
obligations under HMDA; HMDA does

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not require a legislative rulemaking to
identify modifications to the public
HMDA data. As discussed in more
detail in the proposal,174 in the 2015
HMDA Final Rule, the Bureau
interpreted HMDA, as amended by the
Dodd-Frank Act, to require that the
Bureau use a balancing test to determine
whether and how HMDA data should be
modified prior to public disclosure to
protect applicant and borrower privacy
while also fulfilling HMDA’s public
disclosure purposes. The Bureau
interpreted HMDA to require that public
HMDA data be modified when the
disclosure of the unmodified data
creates risks to applicant and borrower
privacy interests that are not justified by
the benefits of such disclosure in light
of the statutory purposes.175 This
interpretation implemented HMDA
sections 304(h)(1)(E) and 304(h)(3)(B)
because it prescribed standards for
requiring modification of itemized
information, for the purpose of
protecting the privacy interests of
mortgage applicants and borrowers, that
is or will be available to the public.176
The final policy guidance applies the
balancing test to determine whether and
how to modify the HMDA data reported
under the 2015 HMDA Final Rule before
it is disclosed on the loan level to the
public.
Nonetheless, as noted above, even
though it is not required to do so as a
matter of law, the Bureau has decided
that it would be beneficial to undergo a
separate notice and comment legislative
rulemaking under the APA to determine
what HMDA data will be disclosed in
future years. The Bureau will commence
such a rulemaking in May 2019.
Data Collection and Reporting Under
the 2015 HMDA Final Rule and Related
Data Security Concerns
Several industry commenters raised
concerns with the data collection and
reporting requirements imposed on
financial institutions by the 2015
HMDA Final Rule, and one consumer
advocate commenter requested that the
Bureau require the collection and
reporting of additional data. These
comments are outside the scope of the
proposed policy guidance, which
concerned only the public disclosure of
data collected and reported, not the
collection and reporting itself.177 As
174 See
175 80

82 FR 44586, 44589 (Sept. 25, 2017).
FR 66128, 66134 (Oct. 28, 2015).

176 Id.
177 The Bureau noted in the proposed policy
guidance that the proposal did not reopen any
portion of the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, as the
Bureau did not intend, in the policy guidance, to
revisit any decisions made in that rulemaking. See
82 FR 44586, 44587 (Sept. 25, 2017).

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mentioned above, the Bureau intends to
reconsider aspects of the 2015 HMDA
Final Rule. Concerns about the data
required to be collected and reported
under Regulation C are more
appropriately raised in comments
submitted in connection with that
rulemaking.
Several industry commenters also
raised data security concerns related to
the collection and reporting of HMDA
data, including concerns with the
system lenders use to submit their
HMDA data to the Bureau and the
Bureau’s ability to protect the data
during transmission and storage. A few
of these commenters urged the Bureau
to publish the details of its information
security practices and procedures to
address these concerns. One industry
commenter suggested that financial
institutions would be liable for a data
breach at the Bureau that exposed
nonpublic HMDA data, and also that
financial institutions would be required
to mitigate damages incurred by their
customers as a result of such a breach.
Again, these comments are outside the
scope of the proposed policy guidance,
which concerns the Bureau’s intentional
disclosure of HMDA data to the public
as required by the statute. No comments
received on the proposed policy
guidance addressed data security
concerns raised by the Bureau’s
proposed disclosure of HMDA data as
required by HMDA.

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Public Education
A group of industry commenters
expressed concern that applicants do
not understand why financial
institutions must ask for certain
sensitive information and report the
information to the Bureau, and why
such information may be publicly
disclosed. These commenters suggested
that explanatory information provided
at the time of application would be
especially helpful, and asked that the
Bureau consult with industry and
engage in educational efforts concerning
the purposes and requirements of
HMDA. A group of consumer advocate
commenters requested that the Bureau
produce materials to help data users
understand the HMDA data to be made
public and in what form. These
commenters suggested that the Bureau
update a chart it has previously made
public, describing the HMDA data to be
collected and reported, to reflect if and
how the data will be made available to
the public. The Bureau will consider, as
it does in the ordinary course of its
business, whether to address the
concerns expressed in these comments.

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V. Regulatory Requirements
The Bureau concludes that the final
policy guidance on Disclosure of LoanLevel HMDA Data is a non-binding
general statement of policy and/or a rule
of agency organization, procedure, or
practice exempt from notice and
comment rulemaking requirements
under the APA pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
553(b). Because no notice of proposed
rulemaking was required, the Regulatory
Flexibility Act does not require an
initial or final regulatory flexibility
analysis.178 The existing information
collections contained in Regulation C
have been approved by the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) and
assigned OMB control number 3170–
0008. The Bureau determines that this
final policy guidance does not impose
any new or revise any existing
recordkeeping, reporting, or disclosure
requirements on covered entities or
members of the public that would be
collections of information requiring
OMB approval under the Paperwork
Reduction Act, 44 U.S.C. 3501, et seq.
The Bureau has a continuing interest in
the public’s opinions regarding this
determination. At any time, comments
regarding this determination may be
sent to the Bureau of Consumer
Financial Protection (Attention: PRA
Office), 1700 G Street NW, Washington
DC 20552, or by email to CFPB_Public_
PRA@cfpb.gov. The Bureau stated these
conclusions in the proposed policy
guidance and did not receive any
comments on them.
VI. Congressional Review Act
Pursuant to the Congressional Review
Act (5 U.S.C. 801 et seq.), the Bureau
plans to submit a report containing this
policy guidance and other required
information to each House of the
Congress and the Comptroller General.
The Bureau plans to make such a
submission at least 60 days prior to the
date the Bureau will first publish loanlevel HMDA data consistent with this
policy guidance. The Bureau expects to
publish such information on March 29,
2019. The Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs has designated this
policy guidance as a ‘‘major rule’’ under
5 U.S.C. 804(2).
VII. Final Policy Guidance on
Disclosure of Loan-Level HMDA Data
The text of the final policy guidance
is as follows:
178 5

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671

Policy Guidance on Disclosure of LoanLevel HMDA Data
A. Background
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act
(HMDA), 12 U.S.C. 2801 et seq., requires
certain financial institutions to collect,
report, and disclose data about their
mortgage lending activity. HMDA is
implemented by Regulation C, 12 CFR
part 1003. HMDA identifies its purposes
as providing the public and public
officials with sufficient information to
enable them to determine whether
financial institutions are serving the
housing needs of the communities in
which they are located, and to assist
public officials in their determination of
the distribution of public sector
investments in a manner designed to
improve the private investment
environment.179 In 1989, the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve
System (Board) recognized a third
HMDA purpose of identifying possible
discriminatory lending patterns and
enforcing antidiscrimination statutes,
which now appears with HMDA’s other
purposes in Regulation C.180
In 2010, Congress enacted the DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act).181
Among other changes, the Dodd-Frank
Act expanded the scope of information
relating to mortgage applications and
loans that must be collected, reported,
and disclosed under HMDA and
authorized the Bureau to require by rule
financial institutions to collect, report,
and disclose additional information.
The Dodd-Frank Act amendments to
HMDA also added new section
304(h)(1)(E), which directs the Bureau
to develop regulations, in consultation
with the agencies identified in section
304(h)(2),182 that ‘‘modify or require
modification of itemized information,
for the purpose of protecting the privacy
interests of the mortgage applicants or
mortgagors, that is or will be available
to the public.’’ Section 304(h)(3)(B), also
added by the Dodd-Frank Act, directs
179 12

U.S.C. 2801(b).
Home Mortgage Disclosure, 54 FR 51356,
51357 (Dec. 15, 1989) (recognizing the purpose of
identifying possible discriminatory lending patterns
and enforcing antidiscrimination statutes in light of
the 1989 amendments to HMDA, which mandated
the reporting of the race, sex, and income of loan
applicants).
181 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
Protection Act, Public Law 111–203, 124 Stat. 1376,
1980, 2035–38, 2097–101 (2010).
182 These agencies are the prudential regulators—
the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
the National Credit Union Administration, and the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—the
Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Together with the Bureau, these agencies are
referred to herein as ‘‘the agencies.’’
180 See

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the Bureau of Consumer Financial
Protection (Bureau) to ‘‘prescribe
standards for any modification under
paragraph (1)(E) to effectuate the
purposes of [HMDA], in light of the
privacy interests of mortgage applicants
or mortgagors. Where necessary to
protect the privacy interests of mortgage
applicants or mortgagors, the Bureau
shall provide for the disclosure of
information . . . in aggregate or other
reasonably modified form, in order to
effectuate the purposes of [HMDA].’’ 183
On October 28, 2015, the Bureau
published a final rule amending
Regulation C (2015 HMDA Final Rule)
to implement the Dodd-Frank Act
amendments and make other changes,
including adding a number of new data
points.184 Most provisions of the 2015
HMDA Final Rule took effect on January
1, 2018,185 and apply to data financial
institutions collect beginning in 2018
and report beginning in 2019.

information, for the purpose of
protecting the privacy interests of
mortgage applicants and borrowers, that
is or will be available to the public.186
The Bureau has applied the balancing
test to determine whether and how to
modify the HMDA data reported under
the 2015 HMDA Final Rule before it is
disclosed on the loan level to the public.
This policy guidance describes the loanlevel HMDA data that the Bureau
intends to make available to the public
beginning in 2019, with respect to data
compiled by financial institutions in or
after 2018, including modifications that
the Bureau intends to apply to the data.
This policy guidance is exempt from
notice and comment rulemaking
requirements under the Administrative
Procedure Act pursuant to 5 U.S.C.
553(b) and is non-binding.

B. The Balancing Test
In the 2015 HMDA Final Rule, in
consultation with the agencies and after
notice and comment, the Bureau
interpreted HMDA, as amended by the
Dodd-Frank Act, to require that the
Bureau use a balancing test to determine
whether and how HMDA data should be
modified prior to its disclosure to the
public to protect applicant and borrower
privacy while also fulfilling HMDA’s
public disclosure purposes. The Bureau
interpreted HMDA to require that public
HMDA data be modified when the
release of the unmodified data creates
risks to applicant and borrower privacy
interests that are not justified by the
benefits of such release to the public in
light of HMDA’s purposes. In such
circumstances, the need to protect the
privacy interests of mortgage applicants
or mortgagors requires that the itemized
information be modified. This binding
interpretation implemented HMDA
sections 304(h)(1)(E) and 304(h)(3)(B)
because it prescribed standards for
requiring modification of itemized

The Bureau intends to publicly
disclose loan-level HMDA data reported
pursuant to the 2015 HMDA Final Rule
as follows:
1. Except as provided in paragraphs 2
through 8 below, the Bureau intends to
disclose all data as reported, without
modification.
2. The Bureau intends to exclude the
following from the public loan-level
HMDA data:
a. Universal loan identifier, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(i), or
non-universal loan identifier, collected
pursuant to 83 FR 45325, 45330 (Sept.
7, 2018);
b. The date the application was
received or the date shown on the
application form, collected pursuant to
12 CFR 1003.4(a)(1)(ii);
c. The date of action taken by the
financial institution on a covered loan
or application, collected pursuant to 12
CFR 1003.4(a)(8)(ii);
d. The address of the property
securing the loan or, in the case of an
application, proposed to secure the
loan, collected pursuant to 12 CFR
1003.4(a)(9)(i);
e. The credit score or scores relied on
in making the credit decision, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(15)(i);
f. The unique identifier assigned by
the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing
System and Registry for the mortgage
loan originator, as defined in Regulation
G, 12 CFR 1007.102, or Regulation H, 12
CFR 1008.23, as applicable, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(34);
g. The result generated by the
automated underwriting system used by
the financial institution to evaluate the

183 Section 304(h)(3)(A) provides that a
modification under section 304(h)(1)(E) shall apply
to information concerning ‘‘(i) credit score data . . .
in a manner that is consistent with the purpose
described in paragraph (1)(E); and (ii) age or any
other category of data described in paragraph (5) or
(6) of subsection (b), as the Bureau determines to
be necessary to satisfy the purpose described in
paragraph (1)(E), and in a manner consistent with
that purpose.’’ 12 U.S.C. 2803(h)(3)(A).
184 See generally Home Mortgage Disclosure
(Regulation C), 80 FR 66128 (Oct. 28, 2015); see also
Home Mortgage Disclosure (Regulation C), 80 FR
69567 (Nov. 10, 2015) (making technical
corrections).
185 Certain amendments to the definition of
financial institution went into effect on January 1,
2017. See 12 CFR 1003.2 (effective Jan. 1, 2017); 80
FR 66128, 66308 (Oct. 28, 2015).

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C. Loan-Level HMDA Data To Be
Disclosed to the Public

186 80

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application, collected pursuant to 12
CFR 1003.4(a)(35)(i); and
h. Free-form text fields used to report
the following data: Applicant or
borrower race, collected pursuant to 12
CFR 1003.4(a)(10)(i); applicant or
borrower ethnicity, collected pursuant
to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(10)(i); name and
version of the credit scoring model used
to generate each credit score or credit
scores relied on in making the credit
decision, collected pursuant to 12 CFR
1003.4(a)(15)(i); the principal reason or
reasons the financial institution denied
the application, if applicable, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(16); and
automated underwriting system name,
collected pursuant to 12 CFR
1003.4(a)(35)(i).
3. With respect to the amount of the
covered loan or the amount applied for,
collected pursuant to 12 CFR
1003.4(a)(7), the Bureau intends to:
a. Disclose the midpoint for the
$10,000 interval into which the reported
value falls, e.g., for a reported value of
$117,834, disclose $115,000 as the
midpoint between values equal to
$110,000 and less than $120,000; and
b. Indicate where possible whether
the reported value exceeds the
applicable dollar amount limitation on
the original principal obligation in effect
at the time of application or origination
as provided under 12 U.S.C. 1717(b)(2)
and 12 U.S.C. 1454(a)(2).
4. With respect to the age of an
applicant or borrower, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(10)(ii), the
Bureau intends to:
a. Bin reported values into the
following ranges, as applicable: 25 to 34;
35 to 44; 45 to 54; 55 to 64; and 65 to
74;
b. Bottom-code reported values under
25;
c. Top-code reported values over 74;
and
d. Indicate whether the reported value
is 62 or higher.
5. With respect to the ratio of the
applicant’s or borrower’s total monthly
debt to the total monthly income relied
on in making the credit decision,
collected pursuant to 12 CFR
1003.4(a)(23), the Bureau intends to:
a. Bin reported values into the
following ranges, as applicable: 20
percent to less than 30 percent; 30
percent to less than 36 percent; and 50
percent to less than 60 percent;
b. Bottom-code reported values under
20 percent;
c. Top-code reported values of 60
percent or higher; and
d. Disclose, without modification,
reported values greater than or equal to
36 percent and less than 50 percent.

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Federal Register / Vol. 84, No. 21 / Thursday, January 31, 2019 / Notices
6. With respect to the value of the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(28), the
Bureau intends to disclose the midpoint
for the $10,000 interval into which the
reported value falls, e.g., for a reported
value of $117,834, disclose $115,000 as
the midpoint between values equal to
$110,000 and less than $120,000.
7. With respect to the number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property securing the covered loan or,
in the case of an application, proposed
to secure the covered loan, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(31), the
Bureau intends to:
a. Bin reported values into the
following ranges, as applicable: 5 to 24;
25 to 49; 50 to 99; and 100 to 149;
b. Top-code reported values over 149;
and
c. Disclose, without modification,
reported values below 5.
8. With respect to the number of
individual dwelling units related to the
property that are income-restricted
pursuant to Federal, State, or local
affordable housing programs, collected
pursuant to 12 CFR 1003.4(a)(32), the
Bureau intends to disclose reported
values as a percentage, rounded to the
nearest whole number, of the value
collected pursuant to 12 CFR
1003.4(a)(31).
Dated: December 20, 2018.
Kathleen Kraninger,
Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial
Protection.
[FR Doc. 2018–28404 Filed 1–30–19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4810–AM–P

CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Agency Information Collection
Activities; Submission to the Office of
Management and Budget for Review
and Approval; Comment Request;
Employers of National Service
Enrollment Form and Employers of
National Service Annual Survey;
Proposed Information Collection;
Comment Request

Comments

Corporation for National and
Community Service.
ACTION: Notice.
amozie on DSK3GDR082PROD with NOTICES1

AGENCY:

The Corporation for National
and Community Service (CNCS) has
submitted a public information
collection request (ICR) entitled
Employers of National Service
Enrollment Form and Annual Survey for
review and approval in accordance with
the Paperwork Reduction Act.

SUMMARY:

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Comments may be submitted,
identified by the title of the information
collection activity, by March 4, 2019.
ADDRESSES: Comments may be
submitted, identified by the title of the
information collection activity, to the
Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs, Attn: Ms. Sharon Mar, OMB
Desk Officer for the Corporation for
National and Community Service, by
any of the following two methods
within 30 days from the date of
publication in the Federal Register:
(1) By fax to: 202–395–6974,
Attention: Ms. Sharon Mar, OMB Desk
Officer for the Corporation for National
and Community Service; or
(2) By email to: smar@omb.eop.gov.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Copies of this ICR, with applicable
supporting documentation, may be
obtained by calling the Corporation for
National and Community Service,
Sharron A. Walker-Tendai, at 202–606–
6930 or by email to Stendai@cns.gov.
Individuals who use a
telecommunications device for the deaf
(TTY–TDD) may call 1–800–833–3722
between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Eastern
Time, Monday through Friday.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The OMB
is particularly interested in comments
which:
• Evaluate whether the proposed
collection of information is necessary
for the proper performance of the
functions of CNCS, including whether
the information will have practical
utility;
• Evaluate the accuracy of the
agency’s estimate of the burden of the
proposed collection of information,
including the validity of the
methodology and assumptions;
• Propose ways to enhance the
quality, utility, and clarity of the
information to be collected; and
• Propose ways to minimize the
burden of the collection of information
on those who are to respond, including
through the use of appropriate
automated, electronic, mechanical, or
other technological collection
techniques or other forms of information
technology.
DATES:

A 60-day Notice requesting public
comment was published in the Federal
Register on October 17, 2018 at Vol. 83,
No. 201, Pg. 52419–52420. This
comment period ended December 17,
2018. No public comments were
received.
Title of Collection: Employers of
National Service Enrollment Form and
Employers of National Service Annual
Survey.

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673

OMB Control Number: 3045–0175.
Type of Review: Renewal and addition
of second instrument.
Respondents/Affected Public: Any
organization that seeks to be or is an
Employer of National Service program,
including businesses, nonprofits,
institutions of higher education, school
districts, state/local governments, and
federal agencies.
Total Estimated Number of Annual
Responses: 1180.
Total Estimated Number of Annual
Burden Hours: 490.
Abstract: This is a request to renew
the Employers of National Service
Enrollment Form and add an additional
related instrument, the Employers of
National Service Annual Survey.
Organizations from all sectors either
seeking to become or already
established Employers of National
Service will be filling out these forms,
including businesses, nonprofits,
institutions of higher education, school
districts, state/local governments, and
federal agencies. The key purpose of the
enrollment form is to document what
the organization is committing to doing
as an Employer of National Service and
provide contact information to CNCS.
The information gathered on the
enrollment form will also allow CNCS
to display the organization’s
information accurately online as a
resource for job seekers. It will also
enable CNCS to speak to the diversity
within the program’s membership, both
for internal planning and external
audience use. The purpose of the survey
form is to track what actions an
employer has taken in the past year,
gather stories of success or impact,
collect quantitative hiring data relating
to AmeriCorps and Peace Corps alumni,
and provide organizations with an
opportunity to update their contact and
location data. CNCS seeks to renew the
current information collection. The
revisions are intended to reflect
feedback from those outside CNCS. The
information collection will otherwise be
used in the same manner as the existing
application. CNCS also seeks to
continue using the current application
until the revised application is
approved by OMB. The current
application is due to expire on March
31, 2019.
Dated: December 21, 2018.
Sharron A. Walker-Tendai,
Program Support Specialist.
[FR Doc. 2019–00440 Filed 1–30–19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6050–28–P

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