The CFPB's Semiannual Report: What Narrower Federal Enforcement Means for Fair Lending, HMDA and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Programs

On October 27, 2026, the CFPB sent Congress its Semi-Annual Report for January through June 2026. The fair lending chapter is short and blunt. The Bureau now pursues "direct evidence of intentional discrimination on a prohibited basis and identified victims," it cited no fair lending violations in the period, and it made no pattern-or-practice referrals to the Department of Justice. This article reads the full report (PDF) for what changed, what did not, and what a fair lending, HMDA or Community Reinvestment Act program should keep doing.

Key takeaways

• The CFPB says it will bring fair lending cases only on intentional discrimination with identified victims, and it will not pursue redlining "based solely on statistical correlation."
• For banks and credit unions with $10 billion or less in assets, the CFPB was never the fair lending enforcer. Your prudential regulator still examines you, and the OCC still analyzes HMDA data for disparate treatment.
• CFPB HMDA exams now center on one thing: whether the key data points you reported are accurate.
• Keep your monitoring running. Intentional discrimination and redlining stay illegal, states are active, and the April 2026 Regulation B rule is being challenged in two federal courts.

Reviewing what your fair lending program still needs after this report? See how Comply Fair Lending runs the analysis in a demo.

What does the CFPB's semiannual report say about fair lending?

The report says the CFPB has narrowed its fair lending work to intentional discrimination with identified victims, finalized two Regulation B rules, and found no fair lending violations to cite in the period it covers. The main report covers January 1 to June 30, 2026. The supervision and enforcement chapters reach back to July 1, 2025.

The fair lending chapter sets out three positions. First, supervision and enforcement focus on "matters with direct evidence of intentional discrimination on a prohibited basis and identified victims." Second, the Bureau says it "is not engaging in redlining enforcement based solely on statistical correlation and/or stray remarks that may be susceptible to adverse inference." Third, where it does find intentional discrimination, "the CFPB will seek the maximum penalties."

The two rules it lists are the April 22, 2026 Regulation B final rule, effective July 21, 2026, which removed the "effects test" and states that ECOA does not authorize disparate impact liability, and the May 1, 2026 Section 1071 rule. The report says the 1071 rule lowers the small business revenue line from $5 million to $1 million, drops data points the statute does not require, and moves the compliance date to January 1, 2028.

The report also names a new priority. Debanking under Executive Order 14331 is "a top priority," and the CFPB says it is evaluating institutions for ECOA and FCRA adverse action notice compliance and "for evidence of intentional discrimination on the basis of religion."

What changed in CFPB supervision and enforcement

These are the report's own figures. The supervision and enforcement numbers cover July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026.

• The CFPB closed 1,327 of the 1,552 Supervisory Actions open on July 1, 2025, about 86 percent, either because the issue was fixed or because the finding "no longer aligned with Bureau priorities."
• It reassessed all 80 open examinations. It closed 66 that did not fit its priorities and told those institutions any preliminary findings were void. Fourteen continued.
• It cut the number of scheduled exams by about 50 percent and shifted toward depository institutions.
• It closed about 40 percent of its pending investigations.
• In fair lending specifically, it "did not cite any fair lending violations during the reporting period" and made no pattern-or-practice referrals to DOJ, though it says it "did move forward with fair lending investigations."
• It terminated three fair lending orders early: the 2023 ECOA order against Citibank (terminated October 16, 2025) and two HMDA orders against Washington Federal from 2013 and 2020 (both terminated September 22, 2025). The report notes Citibank had paid its $24.5 million civil money penalty and Washington Federal its penalties before termination.

The report also describes a new "Humility in Supervision Pledge" that examiners read to each institution before an exam. It promises advance notice, narrower information requests and shorter exams than the old eight-week model.

For HMDA filers, one sentence matters more than the rest: "HMDA examination work focuses on validating the accuracy of key data points collected and submitted by financial institutions in accordance with Regulation C." The report says ECOA and HMDA supervisory work was scoped during the period and is "scheduled to begin after the end of this reporting period." So exams on both are coming, and the HMDA ones will test your data.

What did not change: the laws, the other examiners, and HMDA and CRA reporting

The report describes how one agency uses its discretion. It does not repeal anything, and for most community banks the CFPB was never the agency doing the fair lending exam.

The prudential regulators still examine. Under 12 U.S.C. 5516(d), for banks and credit unions with $10 billion or less in assets, the prudential regulator has "exclusive authority (relative to the Bureau)" to enforce federal consumer financial law. The CFPB's examination authority under 12 U.S.C. 5515 covers institutions above $10 billion. The OCC stopped examining for disparate impact in July 2025, but OCC Bulletin 2025-16 says its process still includes "analyzing Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data for possible evidence of disparate treatment" and "conducting risk-based fair lending examinations."

HMDA reporting is unchanged. The report itself notes the 2025 HMDA data release covering 4,782 institutions and the January 2026 adjustment of the Regulation C asset exemption threshold to $59 million. Institutions above it still collect and report.

CRA is not the CFPB's to change. The Community Reinvestment Act is administered by the OCC, FDIC and Federal Reserve. On November 5, 2026, those agencies released the 2025 CRA small business, small farm and community development lending data, the dataset examiners use to judge CRA lending against the market.

State and private pressure has not let up

Less federal enforcement does not mean less exposure. The report's own state chapter lists actions state attorneys general brought under the Consumer Financial Protection Act (12 U.S.C. 5552), including a suit by thirteen states against OneMain filed on March 16, 2026. Those cases are not fair lending cases, but they show states are using federal consumer law on their own.

On fair lending, California went furthest. AB 801 requires the state's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation to examine state banks, credit unions and mortgage licensees for discrimination starting January 1, 2027. Our article on California's fair lending exam law covers who is in scope. The April Regulation B rule is also being challenged in two federal suits, which we track in the Regulation B lawsuits article. If a court vacates the rule, the earlier text with the effects test comes back.

What to keep running in your fair lending program

Most of the testing a fair lending program does was never only about disparate impact. A pricing gap that holds after credit factors are controlled for can be the first sign of disparate treatment. A thin lending record in majority-minority tracts is where a redlining review starts, and regulators classify redlining as disparate treatment. Those are the exact cases the CFPB says it still brings, and the prudential regulators still examine for.

• HMDA data accuracy. The CFPB says its HMDA exams will validate key data points. Edit and reconcile the fields that drive analysis (action taken, pricing, demographics, geography) before you file, not after an examiner samples them.
• Pricing and underwriting comparisons. Compare denial rates and pricing across groups, then test whether gaps hold once your actual credit factors are in the model.
• Redlining and peer review. Compare your applications and originations in low- and moderate-income and majority-minority tracts with peer lenders in the same markets.
• A documented self-assessment. Our fair lending self-assessment guide walks through the steps. Keep the outputs, so you have a history whichever way the courts go.

Comply Fair Lending runs pricing and underwriting regressions on your own loan data and shows which factors went into each model. Comply Peer-2-Peer compares your lending with peer groups built from public HMDA and CRA data, and Comply HMDA/CRA runs the FFIEC validity, quality and macro edits as you work, so accuracy problems surface before you submit. If you would rather not install and maintain the software yourself, RATA Hosted Services hosts every Comply module for you.

Schedule your free demo today

The bottom line

The report is a clear statement of what the CFPB will and will not pursue. It is not a statement about what the law requires, and it says nothing that binds the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, NCUA, HUD, DOJ or the states. For a community bank, the practical change is small. For an institution over $10 billion, the next CFPB exam will be narrower and shorter, and its HMDA portion will test the accuracy of your data. Either way, the monitoring that answers an examiner's disparate treatment and redlining questions is the same monitoring you ran last year.

Want to see how your HMDA and CRA data would hold up to an accuracy review? Book a Comply HMDA/CRA demo.

Sources

• Semi-Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, January 2026 to June 2026
  CFPB, published October 27, 2026 (report page). Read November 10, 2026.
• Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Regulation B), final rule
  CFPB, 91 FR 21620, April 22, 2026.
• Small Business Lending Under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Regulation B), final rule
  CFPB, May 1, 2026.
• 12 U.S.C. 5515 and 12 U.S.C. 5516
  Legal Information Institute. Read November 10, 2026.
• OCC Bulletin 2025-16, Fair Lending: Removing References to Disparate Impact
  OCC, July 14, 2025.
• Federal Bank Regulatory Agencies Release 2025 Small Business, Small Farm, and Community Development Lending Data
  OCC News Release 2026-98, November 5, 2026.

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