On March 30, 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published an 888-page final rule to implement Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. That section amends the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require financial institutions to collect and report certain data in connection with credit applications made by women- or minority-owned and/or LGBTQI+ businesses and small businesses. While a federal judge halted implementation of the rule, bankers should still use this extra time to prepare.

The combination of these three critical regulations will bring to light issues in lending policies and will highlight a lack of lending in certain areas which is a direct link to Redlining. The financial institutions that fail to meet the credit needs of their selected assessment area are a target of special interest groups. The populations of the redlined areas are often high minority (fair lending) and low income (CRA). That is the collision of fair lending and CRA. What will the future bring with the passing of Small Business Data Collection 1071 regulations.

Topics include:

• The umbrella of laws and regulations that make up fair lending
• The final regulations for CRA and Section 1071 and the intersection with fair lending
• Steps to detect potential redlining and actions to take to minimize problems
• The public data collection requirements, the annual reporting requirements and what the data will say about your institution
• The concept of Reasonable Expected Marketing Area and its impact to fair lending, CRA and Section 1071
  
• The issues present in recent cases, the penalties imposed on each institution and the corrective action ordered by the regulators and what we can learn from them