HMDA Gets Mixed Reviews in House Committee Hearing

WASHINGTON–The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations heard everything from how HMDA is a valuable tool for rooting out unfair lending practices to how HMDA has utterly failed to do just that during a hearing yesterday. A variety of federal financial regulators, including NCUA, outlined how HMDA is used to detect unfair lending practices and suggested the current process is working fine. Indeed, the American Financial Services Association agreed with the federal agencies, suggesting any expansion of HMDA could cause a bevy of problems, not the least of which is a threat to consumer privacy. Not surprisingly, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition took a different view. “As powerful as HMDA data has been in the efforts to stop discrimination, the full potential of HMDA has not been realized because key data elements remain missing from HMDA data,” NCRC CEO John Taylor said, who added “fair lending and consumer protection regulation has failed to protect consumers adequately.”