I attended a fair lending seminar put on by a group of local attorneys yesterday, and one off-topic tidbit caught my attention - that the Grand Rapids MSA was going to be split apart and reconfigured. Sure enough, today there's a story in the local paper, talking about what this might mean for Medicare allocations, etc.

This led me to this link at the Office of Management & Budget, and it appears that our traditional 4-digit MSA codes will become 5-digit ones.

Has anyone else heard about this? When must we start using the new codes for HMDA/CRA purposes?

Answering my own question - the preliminary HMDA edits and file specs for 2004 reporting (found on the FFIEC website) indicate that the field size for the metropolitan area has increased from 4 digits to 5. It looks like we may need to convert for 2004 data collection - one more topic for HMDA training...