From the Fed this morning:

"The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday approved a final rule amending Regulation B, which implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA). Among other things, the final rule addresses the collection of applicants' personal characteristics in connection with nonmortgage credit and record retention for prescreened solicitations.

The final rule amending Regulation B is effective April 15, 2003. However, to allow time for any necessary operational changes, the mandatory compliance date is April 15, 2004."

Has anyone found a copy of the final rule online?

Here's a link to this FRB Press Release:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/press/bcreg/2003/20030219/

David --

Would you go back and edit out the [/url] at the end?

I had already seen the press release--which was a tease. Has anyone found the actual regs?

A duplicate discussion is going on here. No one has seen the final ruling yet and they don't expect it to be available for a few days.

Do you think there will be a definition for "prescreened solicitations" in the amended Reg. B Commentary? I'm concerned about whether a special loan or CD product being directly mailed to certain households in certain, predetermined census tracts or zip codes would trigger the record retention of the list of criteria used to select potential customers.

You can find the Board memorandum on their website at the following link. It isn't the final-final version but it does contain the federal register text. The PR office told me that it takes one week to appear in the federal register. Obtaining the document this way thought yields some interesting information, specifically from the memorandum to the Board explaining their recommendations.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/meetings/2003/20030219/openmemos.htm

I hope this is helpful,
Christina Speh

The commentary to Section 202.12(b)(7)which is where the new requirement on pre-screened solicitations is located states that the definition is the one used in FCRA Section 603(l)although it only applies to offers of credit in this case.

We're going to cover all this and more in the Webinar on March 5. There are 2 major issues in the final regulation, but a lot of little things, such as tweaking the definition of creditor in ways that impact underwriters using Loan Processor -- that you'll need to know about.

Will this Webinar be available again???

After the broadcast, you can purchase the webinar from the archives.