The CFPB's 2023 fair lending annual report to Congress
Today, the CFPB released its Fair Lending Annual Report to Congress, describing how we took action against unlawful discrimination and advanced access to fair credit in calendar year 2023.
The CFPB used every tool at our disposal to carry out our fair lending work, from enforcement and supervision to guidance and rulemaking, including close coordination with our state and federal partners.
The CFPB took action against repeat offender Citibank for intentional, illegal discrimination against Armenian Americans applying for credit cards. The CFPB and Department of Justice also sued a Texas-based developer named Colony Ridge for discriminatorily targeting Latinos with inferior mortgage products. The CFPB also identified significant issues around institutions failing to report demographic information required under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). In addition to addressing issues through the supervisory process, we filed two public enforcement actions against repeat offenders, Freedom Mortgage and Bank of America, for inaccurate reporting of HMDA data.
The CFPB, along with its interagency partners, continued the fight against appraisal bias through its leadership of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's Appraisal Subcommittee. We filed court briefs, issued proposed guidance on reconsiderations of value for residential real estate valuations, carried out a rulemaking on automated valuation models, and correspondence urging The Appraisal Foundation to revise its draft Ethics Rule.
We also finalized the Small Business Lending rule to promote economic development, combat unlawful discrimination, and increase transparency in small business lending. The CFPB issued a circular to other law enforcers on adverse action notice requirements and the proper use of the CFPB’s sample forms provided in the regulation implementing the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), and also issued numerous fair lending-related reports and data.
The Fair Lending Annual Report to Congress fulfills the CFPB’s statutory responsibility to, among other things, report annually to Congress on public enforcement actions taken by other agencies with administrative enforcement responsibilities under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), and assessments of the extent to which compliance with ECOA has been achieved. It also fulfills the statutory requirement that the CFPB, in consultation with the Department of Housing and Urban Development report annually on the utility of HMDA’s requirement that covered lenders report certain mortgage loan data.
In the years to come, we will continue our work to ensure a fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory credit market, with equal economic opportunity for all consumers, entrepreneurs, and communities.