The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (or HMDA, pronounced ) is a United States federal law that requires certain financial institutions to provide mortgage data to the public. Congress enacted HMDA in 1975. Purposes HMDA grew out of public concern over credit shortages in certain urban neighborhoods. Congress believed that some financial institutions had contributed to the decline of some geographic areas by their failure to provide adequate home financing to qualified applicants on reasonable terms and conditions. Thus, one purpose of HMDA and Regulation C is to provide the public with information that will help show whether financial institutions are serving the housing credit needs of the neighborhoods and communities in which they are located. A second purpose is to aid public officials in targeting public investments from the private sector to areas where they are needed. Finally, the FIRREA amendments of 1989 require the collection and disclosure of data about applicant and borrower characteristics to assist in identifying possible discriminatory lending patterns and enforcing antidiscrimination statutes. As the name implies, HMDA is a disclosure law that relies upon public scrutiny for its effectiveness. It does not prohibit any specific activity of lenders, and it does not establish a quota system of mortgage loans to be made in any Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) or other geographic area as defined by the Office of Management and Budget. Who reports HMDA data? US financial institutions must report HMDA data to their regulator if they meet certain criteria, such as having assets above a specific threshold. The criteria are different for depository and non-depository institutions and are available on the FFIEC website. Additional information on institutional and transactional coverage for HMDA data collection years 2017 and onward can be found on the CFPB's regulation implementation page. The datasets containing information on HMDA reporters are the HMDA Panel and HMDA Transmittal Sheet. In 2012, there were 7,400 institutions that reported a total of 18.7 million HMDA records. Details of the law Companies covered under HMDA are required to submit a Loan Application Register (LAR) to the FFIEC via the CFPB which acts as the HMDA processor. The LAR must contain the data outlined in the Filing Instruction Guide (FIG) for the relevant collection year for all covered applications or loans. Collection of HMDA data For data from years prior to 2017 reporting institutions were required to submit their LARs by March 1 to the