The CFPB has published a notice in the Federal Register announcing that it has revised its methodology statement for calculating the average prime offer rates (APORs) under Regulations C and Z.

Regulation C requires covered financial institutions to report, for certain transactions, the difference between a loan’s annual percentage rate (APR) and the APOR for a comparable transaction.  Under Regulation Z, a creditor may be subject to certain special provisions if the difference between a loan’s APR and the APOR for a comparable transaction exceeds certain thresholds.

The CFPB calculates APORs on a weekly basis according to a publicly available methodology statement.  The CFPB has revised the statement to reflect a change in the source of survey data for the one-year variable rate mortgage product that it uses to calculate the weekly APORs.  The change was made because Freddie Mac has discontinued publishing the one-year variable rate mortgage data used by the CFPB.  Beginning on July 7, 2016, the CFPB started using data provided by HSH Associates for the one-year variable rate mortgage product.  It continues to use data provided by Freddie Mac for other products in calculating the weekly APORs.