The CFPB should collect even more data on business lending to womenand minorities than it is currently collecting on mortgages tocomply with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

That was the overall recommendation made in a National CommunityReinvestment Coalition report Thursday that advised the CFPB on howit should implement Dodd-Frank Act mandates that require collectionof the data to prevent discrimination.

“In order for regulators and the public to fully understandlending patterns, a comprehensive picture of the lendingmarketplace is needed,” said the report, Small Business Loan Data:Recommendations to the CFPB.

“HMDA covers about 80% of loan transactions, which is apercentage that should be matched or exceeded by comprehensivecoverage of small business lenders,” the report said.

The report also recommended the CFPB collect the data not justfrom large lenders, but also from smaller banks, credit unions, andnon-depository lenders in order to generate an accurate reflectionof lending patterns.

The report further recommended the CFPB collect more than justorigination data, suggesting the bureau also collect information ondenied applications, pricing and creditworthiness.

“The current (Community Reinvestment Act) data has informationonly on originations, not applications or denials. Addinginformation on which borrowers applied and which were denied willprovide much-needed information on demand for credit and theresponsiveness of lenders to loan demand,” said the report.

The NCRC also suggested an expansion of currently tracked racialand ethnic groups.

“The disclosures regarding race and ethnicity need to beimplemented carefully to reflect the variety of racial and ethnicgroups in this country. For example, it is probably not enough torequire disclosures of whether the business is Asian or Hispanic(owned),” said the report

“The CFPB should consider sub-categories to fully capture theexperiences of Asians and Hispanics of various nationalities in themarketplace. The Affordable Care Act provides a refined model forthis type of disclosure that is not onerous,” the report alsosaid.

The CFPB should also gather additional information about thesmall businesses applying for credit, including the number ofemployees, revenue, collateral pledged by borrowers, start-upstatus of the business and loan performance, the reportsaid.

“The required disclosures regarding revenue size of the smallbusiness must be sufficiently detailed so that policymakers and thegeneral public can track loans to microbusinesses which aredisproportionately owned by women and minorities,” the NCRCsaid.

According to the report, the CRA database provides insufficientinformation on lending. The database only contains two revenuecategories – more than and less than $1 million in revenue.

The report also addresses the Dodd-Frank mandate that theCFPB make the collected information publicly available.

“This is important because under HMDA, financial institutionsabused their leeway to provide members of the public with unusableformats like PDF documents totaling hundreds of pages. The CFPBmust mandate data submission in easy-to-use formats for dataanalysis as well as summary tables,” the report said.

The report also cited non-traditional business lending sourceslike peer-to-peer lending, factoring and merchant cash advances asmajor concerns.

“While factoring has been around for decades, other lendingtypes are more recent. Concerns have arisen about the high cost ofsome of this lending and the potential for abuses,” the reportsaid.

The report also recommended the CFPB collect information onpersonal loans entrepreneurs use for business purposes, and notjust business loans.