The American Bankers Association today urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to finalize its rule to change how it enforces the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
The ECOA prohibits creditors from discriminating against applicants on the basis of race, sex and other factors. The CFPB last month proposed to remove disparate impact from its enforcement of the ECOA, clarify the prohibition on discouraging prospective applicants, and establish new limits on special-purpose credit programs offered by lenders.
In a letter, ABA said it supported all three changes.
“ABA members are committed to nondiscriminatory lending, and the ABA supports a durable regulatory framework, grounded in the text of ECOA, that will reinforce ECOA’s antidiscrimination principles while minimizing regulatory ambiguity and uncertainty,” the association said. “Such a framework will advance the purposes of the ECOA, encourage prudent, risk-based underwriting, and discourage arbitrary government enforcement.”
President Trump in April issued an executive order directing federal agencies to “deprioritize enforcement” of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC are among the agencies that have complied by making changes to exam procedures
