On June 18, 2025, the CFPB will publish an interim final rule in the Federal Register to extend the compliance dates of the Small Business Loan Data Collection rule under Dodd-Frank Act section 1071 (Rule) by approximately one year (I wrote about the final rule when it was issued here). The new compliance dates for the highest, moderate, and smallest volume lenders will be July 1, 2026, January 1, 2027, and October 1, 2027, respectively, with filing deadlines on June 1 of the next year. The Rule will be effective 30 days after publication and any public comments must be received by that same date. The CFPB also updated its guidance regarding the grace period it will give for entities under its supervisory and enforcement jurisdiction for good faith compliance efforts to account for the extended compliance dates.
The CFPB noted the three ongoing legal challenges to the Rule in the Fifth Circuit, Eastern District of Kentucky, and the Southern District of Florida, in which the courts have stayed the compliance dates for plaintiffs in those cases (two of which I’ve written about here). Because generally only the plaintiffs in those cases are subject to those court-ordered stays, the CFPB stated that it is extending the compliance dates in the Rule “to facilitate consistent compliance across all covered financial institutions.” The CFPB also stated that this extension “should be sufficient to extend beyond the court-ordered stays and for the CFPB to issue a new proposal to reconsider certain aspects of the 2023 final rule.”
Significantly, a new 1071 rulemaking is the CFPB’s plan. The agency publicly stated this in an April 2025 filing in the Southern District of Florida litigation. In that case, the CFPB stated to the court that the “CFPB’s new leadership has directed staff to initiate a new Section 1071 rulemaking. The CFPB anticipates issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking as expeditiously as reasonably possible.” Now the industry appears to basically have a full reprieve from complying with the Rule as issued. We will have to wait for the proposed rule to see what parts, if any, of the Rule may remain. Note that the data collection requirements are statutory. They were added to ECOA by the Dodd-Frank Act. It will be interesting to see how the CFPB navigates these statutory provisions in a new rulemaking, which must align with this administration’s priorities (I wrote about the CFPB acting leadership’s announcement of updated priorities here).
Other Rulemakings
The CFPB will also publish on June 18, 2025 a final rule that will eliminate its 2012 rule that provides that the CFPB’s rules are considered issued when they are posted on the CFPB’s website (if before publication in the Federal Register). The CFPB issued that rule in 2012 when it was important to meet certain mortgage rulemaking deadlines under Title XIV of the Dodd-Frank Act (the statutory amendments would have become self-effective on their own if the CFPB missed the rulemaking deadline). The CFPB stated that this need is no longer relevant and that the Federal Register is vital in “providing transparency, public notice, and public participation in rulemaking.” For this reason, the CFPB stated it is “deciding to revert to the traditional mechanism for determining when a rule has been validly promulgated absent specific congressional or regulatory imposition of an alternative date.” This final rule will be effective upon publication.
In addition, the CFPB will publish on June 18, 2025 a proposed rule to eliminate the CFPB’s use of leftover funds in its Civil Penalty Fund for consumer education and financial literacy programs. Comments to that proposal will be due 30 days after publication. The CFPB noted that the CFPB’s rule setting forth the procedures for allocating funds to such programs was issued in 2013 and provided “limited information” on how the CFPB would exercise its discretion. The CFPB stated that the existing rule “provides neither adequate guardrails for the agency’s exercise of its discretion nor adequate transparency to the public regarding a potentially significant expenditure.” The CFPB noted that without such guardrails, “there could be incentives to bring enforcement actions for the purpose of aggrandizing the operational scope of the agency.”
These rules were posted by the Federal Register today, June 17, 2025, for public inspection and are accessible here, here, and here.
Please email me at rich@garrishorn.com if you would like to discuss any of the issues in this post or would like assistance with a comment letter.