The CFPB has issued a final rule containing “technical corrections” to the final TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule that became effective on October 3, 2015.  The corrections are effective December 24, 2015, the date of their publication in the Federal Register.

According to the supplementary information accompanying the corrections, the publication of the TRID rule in the Federal Register “resulted in several unintended deletions of existing regulatory text from Regulation Z and the Official [Regulation Z Commentary] and, in one case, the omission of regulatory language in the [final TRID rule] from the [Code of Federal Regulations].”  While not clear from the CFPB’s statement, we understand that the final TRID rule was published correctly in the Federal Register but was incorrectly codified in the CFR by the Government Printing Office.

To correct the CFR, the final rule reinserts existing regulatory text that was “inadvertently deleted” from Regulation Z and its Commentary and amends the Commentary to Appendix D to Regulation Z to add a paragraph that had been included in the final TRID rule published in the Federal Register but “inadvertently omitted” from such Commentary.  The CFPB describes the corrections as “non-substantive changes” to the final TRID rule.

During 2015, despite requests from the industry to address many apparent errors with the TRID rule, the CFPB has so far decided not to act, not even to address issues that would be relatively simple to correct.  For example, because of an apparent error, property taxes paid at closing were not included in the list of items that are not subject to a specific percentage tolerance.  There also are disclosure issues, such as the provisions for determining how to complete the Cash to Close sections of the Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure, which if followed as set forth in the TRID rule can result in (1) disclosing that there are no closing costs being financed when, in fact, the lender is financing closing costs and (2) disclosing a cash to close amount that is lower than the actual cash needed to close.  And, there is the so-called “black hole” issue that appears to prevent a creditor, in various cases, from being able to reset the tolerances with a Closing Disclosure.  Perhaps the CFPB will see fit to address the many issues in 2016.