Sponsors (53)
The bill reduces reporting and compliance costs for lenders and small businesses—potentially easing lending and lowering overhead—but sacrifices standardized small‑business lending data that regulators, advocates, and researchers use to detect discrimination, enforce fair‑lending, and design targeted support, risking worse outcomes for underserved borrowers and possible higher long‑term costs.
Small-business owners will face fewer reporting burdens because lenders no longer must collect and submit detailed small‑business loan data, reducing time and paperwork for borrowers.
Community banks, credit unions, and other lenders will avoid costs of implementing and maintaining 1071 reporting systems, lowering compliance expenses and freeing capital to lend locally.
Community financial institutions will have lower administrative overhead, which may translate into increased loan availability or modestly lower borrowing costs for some customers.
Women- and minority‑owned small businesses and other underserved borrowers lose a standardized data source that helped detect discriminatory lending and direct assistance, reducing transparency and accountability.
Regulators, policymakers, and researchers will have less data to monitor small‑business credit markets and design targeted programs, weakening oversight and potentially making policy responses less effective.
Consumers and communities may face harder enforcement of fair‑lending protections because advocates and authorities lack standardized loan‑level data, risking reduced recourse for discriminatory practices.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Removes the federal requirement that lenders collect and report small‑business loan application and demographic data and deletes related statutory references.
Introduced February 4, 2025 by Roger Williams · Last progress February 4, 2025
Repeals the federal requirement that many lenders collect and report demographic and application data for small-business loan applications. It also removes related references to that requirement throughout the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Dodd‑Frank Act and includes congressional findings saying the data rule increases costs and may reduce credit access for small businesses, especially at smaller lenders. The change eliminates the statutory obligation for lenders to gather and submit small-business lending data, which affects banks, credit unions, regulators, researchers, and small-business borrowers who previously would have been represented in that data set.