Section 1071

Section 1071 is the part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that requires lenders to collect and report data on credit applications from small businesses, including women-owned and minority-owned businesses. It amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) writes the rule, which sits in Regulation B. Its goal is to support fair lending and show where small businesses get credit.

A 2023 final rule was delayed repeatedly by lawsuits and court stays. On May 1, 2026, the CFPB issued a revised final rule that narrowed it sharply. It took effect June 30, 2026. As of October 2026, the key points are:

• Who reports: lenders that originated at least 1,000 covered small business loans in each of the two prior years. That includes banks, credit unions and nonbank lenders, such as online lenders and community development financial institutions (CDFIs). The 2023 rule used 100 loans.
• Small business: gross annual revenue of $1 million or less, down from $5 million.
• Products: loans, lines of credit and credit cards. Merchant cash advances, agricultural credit, loans of $1,000 or less, factoring and leases are excluded.
• When: one compliance date, January 1, 2028, for everyone, with no penalties for good-faith data errors during 2028.
• Data: the fields the law requires, such as credit type, amount applied for, action taken, census tract, revenue, women-owned and minority-owned status, and principal owners' demographics. Pricing and denial reasons were dropped.

Why it matters for lenders

A lender near the 1,000-loan line needs to watch its volume now. Lenders may use 2025 and 2026, instead of 2026 and 2027, to decide whether they are covered at the start. A covered lender must ask for demographic data on the loan application, let applicants decline to answer, limit underwriters' access to the answers where feasible, and report the data each year.

The rule could change again. A lawsuit in which advocacy groups accused the CFPB of abandoning the 2023 rule was dismissed at their request in May 2026. A future rule could widen coverage, so lenders now out of scope should keep watching.

How it works in practice

A CDFI made 1,150 small business loans in 2025 and 1,080 in 2026, so under the optional look-back it expects to be covered from January 1, 2028. During 2027, its compliance lead maps each required data point to a field on the application, adds the demographic questions with the required notice, and limits who can see the answers.

Each loan's census tract is set from the business address when the application arrives. Before the first filing, the team tests a file against the CFPB's format and fixes gaps. Capturing data once on the loan origination record beats re-keying thousands of spreadsheet rows.