July 17, 2023 – Over 67 organizations including the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance signed on to a letter to Congress expressing strong support for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s Section 1071 rule on Small Business Lending Data Collection under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. In the letter, the groups also to expressed strong opposition to any Congressional Review Act resolutions that would overturn CFPB Rule 1071.
Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require financial institutions to compile, maintain, and submit to the Bureau certain data on applications for credit for all defined small businesses, including women and minority-owned small businesses. To be clear, Section 1071 is not optional – it is legally required by Dodd-Frank. CFPB’s regulatory updates are designed to implement section 1071 as intended by Congress, and our organizations strongly support this effort.
The CFPB’s regulatory updates are common sense efforts to improve the public’s understanding of the impacts of lending, including agricultural lending, on-the-ground, and ultimately inform policy that is good for farmers, consumers, and our food and farm systems.
Creating effective and fair policy requires data. To help ensure collection of more robust data, it is critical that agricultural lenders — including those regulated by the Farm Credit Administration, whose mission is to “ensure that Farm Credit System institutions and Farmer Mac are safe, sound, and dependable sources of credit and related services for all creditworthy and eligible persons in agriculture and rural America” – participate in demographic reporting.