It was a long time coming, but persistence paid off when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently updated its mortgage regulations to ease unnecessary restrictions on many community banks. Under an interim final rule, the CFPB expanded Qualified Mortgage eligibility for balloon loans held in portfolio and exempted more rural lenders from escrow mandates.
That might sound a little complicated to the layman. But all it really means is that Washington regulators will allow many community bankers to keep doing what they’ve done for years—making mortgage loans that meet the unique needs of their customers and communities.
And that’s really the heart of the matter here. This isn’t an example of ICBA, our affiliated state associations and community bankers achieving some abstract policy goal. No, this is a case of policymakers acknowledging the benefit of a service that community bankers have offered for generations.
The case for reform has been overwhelming. According to the
ICBA Community Bank Lending Survey released last year, three-quarters of respondents said regulatory burdens are keeping them from making more residential mortgage loans. Half of all rural banks said they did not qualify for the QM rule’s “rural” exception. That report followed the release of ICBA’s 2013
Community Bank Qualified Mortgage Survey, which found that less than half of those offering balloon loans would qualify for the QM rule’s balloon mortgage exception.
Ultimately, it was this hard evidence combined with dogged initiative that saw crucial reforms all the way through—from winning portfolio QM treatment for small creditors in the original rule, to achieving the CFPB’s expanded definition of “rural area,” to the additional relief that advanced last December in the FAST Act. In fact, we still want to take this even further and implement QM safe harbor treatment and escrow relief for
all community bank loans originated and held in portfolio.
I’m thrilled that our persistence has paid off—that the concerns of ICBA have been heard and that thousands of community banks and the customers they serve will regain access to mortgage credit. And I’m thankful for all the hard work that community bankers and the state associations have put into their advocacy. But more than anything, I’m hopeful that this development reminds policymakers that community banks are and always have been in the business of serving local communities—something that Washington should be looking to promote, not regulate out of business.
