CFPB Revokes Lending Guidance for Disadvantaged Borrowers

The CFPB has rescinded six-year-old guidance for lenders on offering special purpose credit programs (SPCPs).

A filing published by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Wednesday (June 17) in the Federal Register revoked guidance issued in 2020 designed to clarify how for-profit lenders could establish SPCS, which are credit assistance programs aimed at economically or socially disadvantaged consumers and commercial businesses.

Now, however, the bureau says that opinion is “outdated” in light of new amendments adopted in April to Regulation B of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which covers fair lending rules.

It’s the latest in a series of sweeping changes at the agency under President Donald Trump.

The CFPB pointed to provisions in the earlier guidance on SPCPs based on characteristics like race, sex or national origin. The revised Regulation B prohibits for-profit organizations from using things like race as eligibility criteria for SPCPs.

In addition, the regulator said lenders operating SPCPs must now show that “under the organization’s customary standards of creditworthiness, a class of persons probably would not receive credit or would receive it on less favorable terms than are ordinarily available to other applicants applying to the organization for a similar type and amount of credit.”

The CFPB’s changes to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act have landed the agency in court. A lawsuit filed last month by the National Fair Housing Alliance and other advocacy groups accuses the bureau of opening the door to discrimination with these changes.

“Eviscerating these guardrails will ultimately result in less credit access for many people, make our markets less sound, and cause our economy to be less productive,” Lisa Rice, the alliance’s president and CEO, said in announcing the suit.

“When the agency built to enforce civil rights and protect consumers walks away from the job, the rule of law remains. That is why we are in court.”

The new changes to the lending rule come a little more than a week after reports that the CFPB had deleted at least 2,200 pages from its website in May. The pages in question included press releases, consumer advisories, congressional testimonies, speeches and blog posts that predated Trump’s second term.

This month also saw Trump nominate Brian Johnson, a Capital One executive and CFPB veteran, to lead the agency.

Johnson held four positions at the CFPB between December 2017 and March 2020, most recently as deputy director. Since 2024, he has served as vice president and U.S. card compliance officer at Capital One.

The administration had called for the elimination of the CFPB but scaled back plans to reduce the bureau’s staff after that effort was halted by a court order.