CFPB Finalizes New Rule For Small Business Census

The new rule is the CFPB’s “small business loan census” under Section 1071 of Dodd‑Frank, requiring covered lenders to collect and report detailed data on small business credit applications, including demographics, pricing and outcomes, to support fair lending enforcement and market transparency.

What the rule does

• Implements Section 1071 of Dodd‑Frank by amending Regulation B to require financial institutions to compile, maintain, and submit data on applications for credit from small businesses, including women‑ and minority‑owned firms.

• Creates what Director Chopra has called a “small business loan census” so the public and regulators can see how banks and nonbanks are serving small business borrowers.

• Requires reporting of application‑level data, including geography, demographics, decision/outcome, and price of credit, subject to CFPB’s privacy and publication approach.

Coverage: who and what is in scope

• Covered credit includes closed‑end loans, lines of credit, business credit cards, online credit products, and merchant cash advances to small businesses.

• Covered lenders include banks, savings associations, credit unions, and non‑depository lenders, including online and fintech lenders, if they meet an origination threshold (initially 100+ small business loans per year in the 2023 final rule).

• A small business is generally defined in the 2023 rule as having gross annual revenue of 5 million dollars or less in the prior fiscal year, though a later CFPB proposal would reduce this to 1 million dollars to narrow scope.

Key data elements

Lenders must collect and report, among other fields:

• Whether the applicant is women‑, minority‑, or LGBTQI+‑owned (self‑identified).

• Principal owners’ race, ethnicity, and sex (self‑reported, not guessed by loan officers).

• Credit type and purpose, amount applied for and originated, pricing terms, action taken, and timing.

• Business characteristics such as census tract and gross annual revenue.

Subsequent proposals would remove some discretionary points (e.g., application method/recipient, denial reasons, pricing details, number of workers) but those changes are not yet final as of the November 2025 proposal stage.

Implementation timing and recent trajectory

• The original 1071 final rule was issued on March 30, 2023, with tiered compliance dates phasing in first for the largest lenders.

• Litigation led to stays for certain lenders and a broader pause while the CFPB reworked aspects of the rule.

• In October 2025, the CFPB finalized an interim rule extending compliance dates and allowing institutions flexibility in which origination years (e.g., 2022–2023, 2023–2024, or 2024–2025) they use to determine their tier.

• In November 2025, the Bureau issued a major proposal to streamline the rule—raising the coverage threshold (proposed up to 1,000 covered originations), narrowing the small‑business definition to 1 million dollars revenue, and trimming data points, signaling a more incremental approach.