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As most lenders know, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age…. We find that most lenders understand the big picture and know it’s illegal to discriminate based on these factors but sometimes when they get into the routine of the day-to-day, they can unknowingly overlook some of the finer details.
Jerod explains more in the video.
TRANSCRIPT:
Page 12 steering. You've probably heard about steering by way of the loan origination compensation rules, but there's also a fair lending intersection. Make sure you're getting people the best product for them and it's not based on any race, sex, national origin, religion, age, marital, status gender. Make sure we keep that all out of there.
Letter G, disability benefits. Think of a doctor's note. You cannot require a doctor's note to prove or demonstrate the continued receipt of public assistance. Several years back, there was some misunderstanding with HUD and some documents they put out with home mortgage lending. They've put that all to rest, but they're still some misconceptions about public assistance and having to have something that demonstrates that it will be ongoing. You are not to require a doctor's note or anything similar unless you have something that indicates that it may not be ongoing. You're to assume it is unless you have something that indicates otherwise.
Page 13, letter H is maternity leave. Don't go here. Okay. So there are discriminatory statements to steer clear of. There are different terms and conditions. You can't treat them differently based on maternity leave or maternity status. Then there's a HUD statement down at the bottom. That HUD statement's important because it gives you something you can do. You can ask someone if they're going to go back to work. So somebody's on maternity leave or is going to be going on maternity leave, a fair question is do you plan to go back to work? If they say no, I plan to be done. Well, that's fair information, but to tell them they have to go back to work before you can get a loan? Not cool and that's these statements and terms and conditions that you need to steer clear of. What I want to leave you with today is that this is a page to make sure that if you're a lender you've studied to make sure you're not doing these things and they haven't crept into your loan process.
