The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection has issued an interpretive and procedural rule to implement and clarify section 104(a) of the Economic, Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. This amended the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Also included in this rule are updates to the filing instructions for 2018 HMDA data.  

The rule clarifies that insured depository institutions and insured credit unions covered by a partial exemption have the option of reporting exempt data fields as long as they report all data fields within any exempt data point. It also clarifies that only loans and lines of credit that are otherwise HMDA reportable count toward the thresholds for the partial exemptions.  

Regulation C, intended to decrease the burden on smaller depository institutions when implementing HMDA regulation, is also clarified in the rule by stating which data points are covered by the partial exemptions.  

The rule also assigns a non-universal loan identifier for partially exempt transactions for institutions that choose not to report a universal loan identifier, and clarifies the exception to the partial exemptions for negative Community Reinvestment Act examination history.