fair lending

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A new CFPB blog post titled “An update on credit access and the Bureau’s first No-Action Letter” provides a boost to lenders using alternative data and machine learning in their underwriting models.

The Bureau issued its first (and so far only) no-action letter in September 2017 to Upstart Network Inc.… Continue Reading

The CFPB’s annual fair lending report covering its 2018 activities was published in today’s Federal Register.  While most of the report recycles information about which we have previously blogged, it does contain the following noteworthy information:

  • In September 2018, the CFPB held a symposium to address the issue of access to credit for consumers who are “credit invisible” – that is, those without an established credit history with the three national credit reporting agencies – and who therefore cannot be scored by most traditional credit scoring models. 
… Continue Reading

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Facebook has agreed to remove age, gender, and zip code targeting for housing, employment, and credit-related advertisements as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the Communications Workers of America, and other plaintiffs.

While Facebook reportedly did not permit advertisers to target specifically by race, it did allow advertisers to use “ethnic affinity” criteria.  … Continue Reading

The CFPB has issued a new annual report covering its fair lending activities during 2017.  Since Mick Mulvaney did not become Acting Director until the end of November 2017, the fair lending activities described in the report largely took place under former Director Cordray’s leadership.

The Bureau’s last annual fair lending report under former Director Cordray (which covered its fair lending activities in 2016) identified the Bureau’s 2017 fair lending priorities. … Continue Reading

While the pace of the CFPB’s fair lending activities has slowed under its new leadership, significant fair lending developments are occurring elsewhere.  In this week’s podcast, we discuss several of those developments and their broader implications.  Our discussion focuses on New York and Connecticut fair lending developments involving auto finance, a private redlining lawsuit, and the FDIC’s recent report on the use of digital footprint data for credit underwriting. … Continue Reading

Last week, the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Inc. filed a complaint against Liberty Bank in Connecticut federal district court alleging that the Bank engaged in discriminatory mortgage lending in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.  The complaint describes the Bank as “the eighth-largest conventional home purchase lender and eleventh-largest refinancer in Connecticut.”… Continue Reading

The FDIC’s Center for Financial Research has issued a research paper that discusses the use of the information contained in a “digital footprint,” meaning the information that people leave online by accessing or registering on a website, for predicting consumer default.

The researchers considered ten digital footprint variables that included:

  • The device type (e.g.
… Continue Reading

The CFPB’s Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity has announced that it will hold a day-long symposium, “Building a Bridge to Credit Visibility,” to “explore challenges many consumers face in accessing credit.”

The CFPB has indicated that the symposium “will convene a diverse set of stakeholders to explore challenges in overcoming barriers to expand fair, equitable, and non-discriminatory access to credit for individuals and communities” and will include perspectives from industry, academia, trade associations, government, community groups, research, and think tank organizations. … Continue Reading

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced that it will “formally seek the public’s comment on whether its 2013 Disparate Impact Regulation is consistent with the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.”

As we reported previously, the regulation provides that liability may be established under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) based on a practice’s discriminatory effect (i.e.,… Continue Reading

In a blog post entitled “How S.2155 (the Bank Lobbyist Act) Facilitates Discriminatory Lending” Professor Adam Levitin claimed that “This bill functionally exempts 85% of US banks and credit unions from fair lending laws in the mortgage market.”  The claim was set forth in bold and italic text.  If the intent was to draw attention to the claim, it worked. … Continue Reading