Questions and Answers
Regulation B requires that creditors request the race (or national origin), sex, marital status, and age of applicants for certain types of home loans. The regulation also specifies the procedure a creditor should follow in requesting and obtaining this information. [Regulation B, §202.13(a), (b), and (c)] The purpose of these requirements is to give regulatory agencies data needed to determine whether a creditor is complying with the regulation—in other words, to monitor compliance. That is why the information is sometimes called “information for government monitoring purposes.”
Regulation B goes on, however, to say that the other federal financial institution regulatory agencies may establish their own monitoring systems as substitutes for the requirements of Regulation B. [Regulation B, §202.13(d)] The OCC has done so. The effect of this is that different types of institutions must collect the monitoring information on different types of loans. The procedures for collecting the monitoring information are also somewhat different for different types of institutions.
The situation is further complicated by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and its implementing regulation, Regulation C (12 CFR 203.1 et seq.). HMDA and Regulation C require certain institutions to collect monitoring information for a particular set of home loans, some of which are not subject to the Regulation B monitoring information requirement. [Regulation C, §203.4(b)]
The point of all this is that institutions must collect monitoring information in the situations where Regulation B requires it (or in the situations where the OCC requires it, in the case of national banks) and in the situations where HMDA requires it, if the institution is subject to HMDA.
Regulation B requires collection when the credit is primarily for the purchase or refinancing of a dwelling occupied or to be occupied by the applicant as a principal residence, where the extension of credit will be secured by the dwelling.
The OCC rule applies to loans for the purchase, construction-permanent financing, or refinancing of residential real property which the applicant intends to occupy as a principal residence.
The main difference between the two rules is that Regulation B applies to mobile home loans while the OCC rule does not.
(Posted: 05/09/2008)
