Regulation B

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The National Fair Housing Alliance (“NFHA”) and three other plaintiffs have amended their lawsuit challenging the CFPB’s recently issued amendments to Regulation B under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”). The amended complaint, filed August 11, makes several important changes to the complaint originally filed on May 27.

The amendments do not fundamentally alter the plaintiffs’ challenge to the Regulation B rule.… Continue Reading

On May 27, 2026, the National Fair Housing Alliance, Rise Economy, BLDS, LLC, and SolasAI filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s amendments to Regulation B, which implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA). We discussed the lawsuit shortly after it was filed in our June 2, 2026 blog post linked above.… Continue Reading

Today’s episode of the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast features a wide-ranging and timely discussion about one of the most consequential fair lending developments in years: the CFPB’s final rule fundamentally reshaping enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and Regulation B.

Hosted by Alan Kaplinsky (the Founder, Chair for 25 years and now Senior Counsel of the Consumer Financial Services Group at Ballard Spahr, LLP), the episode brings together an exceptional panel of fair lending authorities: our special guest Bradley Blower (the Principal and Founder of Inclusive-Partners LLC) along with John Culhane, Jr.,… Continue Reading

On April 22, 2026, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under Acting Director Russell Vought, issued a significant final rule reshaping the agency’s approach to fair lending enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and Regulation B. While early commentary has been sharply divided, a closer reading of the final rule itself reveals a thoughtful and disciplined effort to realign enforcement with statutory text, evidentiary rigor, and practical compliance realities.… Continue Reading

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the consumer financial services industry. From underwriting and fraud detection to customer engagement and collections, financial institutions are increasingly deploying advanced AI tools to automate processes, personalize services, and improve operational efficiency. We are releasing today, on our Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast show, a discussion of what may be the next major technological shift for the industry: Agentic AI in Consumer Financial Services — AI systems capable of acting autonomously, making decisions, and interacting directly with consumers.… Continue Reading

As part of the Federal Reserve Board’s Outlook Live Webinar series, on July 17, 2025, examiners from the Minneapolis and Chicago Federal Reserve Banks hosted a webinar to discuss the regulatory requirements related to adverse action notifications under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), as implemented by Regulation B, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).… Continue Reading

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement agreement with Washington Trust Company, of Westerly (WTC) to resolve claims that WTC redlined majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Rhode Island.

In its complaint against WTC, DOJ alleged that the following practices were used to discriminate against Black and Hispanic borrowers from 2016 to at least 2021:

  • WTC located and maintained all of its Rhode Island branches and loan officers outside of majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods (WTC designated all five counties in Rhode Island as its Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) assessment area);
  • WTC never had a branch in a majority-Black and Hispanic census tract despite the significant presence of majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and census tracts throughout Rhode Island;
  • WTC did not assign a single mortgage loan officer to conduct outreach, market, advertise, or generate loans from majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods;
  • WTC failed to conduct outreach, marketing, and advertising of mortgage services in majority-Black and Hispanic areas;
  • WTC received only 2.4% of its mortgage loan applications from residents of, or for properties located in, majority-Black and Hispanic areas in its CRA assessment area, compared to 9.5% for its peer lenders, and on average 46.5% of the applications generated by WTC in those areas were from White applicants, compared to 25% for its peers.
… Continue Reading

In a memorandum issued on January 26, 2021, President Biden has ordered the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) to “as soon as practicable, take all steps necessary to examine the effects of” the final rule issued by HUD in September 2020 (“2020 Rule”) revising its 2013 Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) disparate impact standards (“2013 Rule”).… Continue Reading

On December 21, 2020, the CFPB issued an advisory opinion that addresses regulatory uncertainty related to certain aspects of special purpose credit programs (“SPCPs”) designed and implemented by for-profit organizations. The advisory opinion was issued as an interpretive rule that will be published in the Federal Register and therefore is exempt from the notice and comment rulemaking requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.… Continue Reading

On September 21, the CFPB finalized its proposal to amend Regulation B requirements related to the collection of consumer ethnicity and race information, in order to resolve the differences between Regulation B and revised Regulation C (the “Final Rule”).  This Final Rule is effective on January 1, 2018, the same effective date for most of the 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Final Rule. … Continue Reading