CFPB Pushes Back Small Business Lending Comment Deadline

The CFPB has pushed back its small business lending comment deadline from July 14th to September 14th. The Request for Information is the first step of its initiative to monitor business loans to women and minorities, as directed by Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank.

Only 15 comments have been submitted so far, a number likely too small to even be helpful to the CFPB. Nonetheless, the comments have been overwhelmingly negative with respondents mostly asking to be exempt from the law or to repeal it.

The Director of Business Lending at a credit union for example, said that the law “puts our staff in the unenviable and unfair position of making an assessment of a borrower’s ethnicity when this information is not provided as if often the choice.” Between that and the cost burden of compliance, he also said his credit union is seriously considering the discontinuance of all small business lending going forward.

The total and complete discontinuance of small business lending is probably not what legislators wanted when they wrote the law.

Prior to that, the Puerto Rico Bankers Association questioned the value of spending big bucks to collect data on minorities when 99% of Puerto Rico’s residents are legally classified as minorities. “The potential complexity and cost of compliance with the minority-owned businesses data collection and reporting requirements of Section 704(B), will impose on our banks an unintended and unreasonable burden,” they said in their public comment.