On October 1, the CFPB released its annual fair lending report to Congress for 2025. According to the report, the Bureau refocused its fair lending program on its statutory authority and on cases of “proven, intentional racial discrimination with actual identifiable victims.” The report describes steps the Bureau took to implement executive orders on disparate impact (previously covered by InfoBytes here), illegal preferences, and debanking (covered here), including ending its use of disparate impact in supervision and enforcement, terminating orders that relied on disparate impact and ending consultations on special purpose credit programs based on race, color, national origin, or sex. The report also summarizes two Regulation B rules finalized in 2026: an April 22 rule stating that the ECOA does not authorize disparate impact liability (covered here) and a May 1 rule narrowing section 1071 small business lending data collection, which the CFPB estimated would save institutions nearly $100 million in one-time costs and between $166 million and $181 million annually.

The report also details the Bureau’s 2025 supervisory and enforcement activity. The CFPB closed nearly 1,500 supervisory actions, or about 76 percent of the total, roughly 12 percent of which related to fair lending. During the year, the Bureau did not initiate any fair lending supervisory activities, cite any fair lending violations, or refer any ECOA matters to the DOJ. According to the report, ECOA exams now focus on direct evidence of intentional discrimination, systemic adverse action notice failures and lenders’ systems for identifying compliance risks. In its required reporting on interagency ECOA enforcement, the CFPB said no federal agency with ECOA enforcement authority brought a public ECOA enforcement action in 2025, although those agencies together cited 140 institutions for ECOA or Regulation B violations. The CFPB said it expects to send Congress a separate report on the usefulness of HMDA data in late 2026.