For applications before January 1, 2018, the GMI section of our application does not have anything to indicate if the information was based on visual observation or surname. Should we report NA for the "visual observation" questions for ethnicity, race and sex for these applications?

You should have current procedures in place for the loan officer to identify whether the information was based on visual observation. Our loan officers notate if the information was based on visual observation on the 1003 or the application addendum we use if a 1003 was not used. We've been doing this for years.

Unless the applicant/borrower is a non natural person the demographics was either collected on visual observation or it was not; so you would report accordingly.

I agree with Dan that you should already have this in place on the existing 1003. If you don't, I'd be asking each LO to go back and complete it or give me something in writing so I had a clean paper trail for HMDA purposes.

Thanks for the help.

I also just found in the HMDA FIG for Ethnicity, Race and Sex with regards to reporting visual observation or reporting NA –

Use Code 3 if the financial institution received the application prior to January 1st, 2018, and the financial institution chooses not to report whether the [ethnicity] [race] [sex] of the applicant or borrower, or of the first co-applicant or co-borrower, as applicable, was collected on the basis of visual observation or surname.