Community Banks and the New "rules"

ABA, State Associations Urge CFPB to Delay Mortgage Rules


The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should delay the January 2014 effective dates of several pending mortgage rules, ABA and bankers associations in every state said in a letter yesterday to CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

The rules’ sweeping changes require extra time for lenders to “confidently come into compliance,” the groups wrote. They pointed out that banks have less than six months to comply, and many have only until November, when they lock down their IT systems to deal with year-end regulatory reporting requirements.

The many revisions that the CFPB continues to make “add further burden for lenders trying to come into compliance, in that they require further evaluation, changes to efforts already underway, and additional costs associated with those efforts,” they said.

The groups added that if banks feel rushed in their compliance efforts or otherwise unable to comply, they may withdraw completely from mortgage lending, which “will deprive the communities they serve of local, high-quality mortgage lending and will harm consumers.”