On April 30, 2026, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a highly anticipated final rule on small business lending and data to be collected pursuant to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Regulation B). The 314-page final rule implements changes to Regulation B made by Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The final rule closely follows the proposed rule issued by the CFPB in 2025 and significantly departs from the final rule issued back in 2023, including:

• Changing the definition of a covered financial institution to 1,000 covered transactions instead of 100.
• Making the gross annual revenue threshold for a “small business” $1 million or less instead of $5 million or less.
• Removing discretionary data points, including application method, application recipient, denial reasons, pricing information and number of workers.
• Replacing the scheduled tiered compliance to a date of Jan. 1, 2028, for all covered financial institutions that originated at least 1,000 covered transactions for small businesses in each of calendar years 2026 and 2027.
• Providing a grace period of Jan. 1, 2028, through Dec. 31, 2028.

These changes effectively eliminate the need for the vast majority of community-based financial institutions, particularly credit unions, from having to collect and report data points for small business loans, not to mention avoiding the significant time and expense of building the processes to enable the collection and reporting of data. 

Does your credit union or bank have additional questions regarding this change or need assistance complying with this rule and others? Rely on Doeren Mayhew’s compliance pros for support.