What: On March 4, 2026, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published in the Federal Register its upcoming rescission of the Fair Housing Home Loan Data System regulation.
Why: The OCC issued this regulation in 1979 to provide a more effective fair housing monitoring program for home loans. The agency has determined this regulation is obsolete because it is largely duplicative of and inconsistent with revisions to other legal authorities that require national banks to collect and retain certain information on applications for home loans. Moreover, the burden the rule imposed on national banks was not justified by the limited utility of data collected. The OCC believes that this rescission will not have a material impact on the availability of data necessary for the OCC to conduct its fair housing supervisory activities.
The OCC conducted a Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis which determined 218 small entities will be impacted by the final rule. Although the final rule will affect a substantial number of small entities, the agency states it will not have a significant economic impact on those small entities in any given year. The OCC estimates the yearly savings from not calculating the statistics required to be up to $6,798 per institution.
Action: The final rule is effective April 3, 2026.
Is your small business or entity being impacted by a proposed rule? If yes, write a comment letter to the proposing agency.