U.S. Senator Katie Britt Applauds Trump Administration’s CFPB’s Rollback of Disastrous 1071 Rule

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) today applauded the Trump Administration's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalizing a rule which will roll back the Biden Administration's misguided 1071 Small Business Lending Data Collection rule.

"I fought for years against the Biden Administration's 1071 rule, including through my PROTECTED Act, because it was far-reaching, imposed significant costs, and unfairly hurt our smallest community banks that serve rural and underserved communities. This new rule ensures small lenders can continue to meet the needs of Main Street businesses, and I'm proud to be a strong supporter. I will always advocate for small businesses across Alabama and our nation-they're the backbone of our country and what make our communities so unique-and our community banks play a pivotal role in providing these businesses with vital access to capital," said Senator Britt.

Senators Britt and John Boozman (R-Ark.) lead the Preventing Regulatory Overreach to Empower Communities to Thrive and Ensure Data privacy (PROTECTED) Act, which aims to shield our smallest financial institutions and Main Street businesses from regulatory overreach and excessive compliance costs and standards, particularly in the absence of a full repeal of the CFPB's final rule for Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The bill would also limit the number of small businesses impacted, and significantly reduce the amount of data required to be collected and reported, to ensure consumers' privacy is protected.

Senator Britt has long been an outspoken opponent of the CFPB's misguided 1071 rule. In October 2024, American Banker published a column written by the Senator warning of the increasing politicization and regulatory overreach at the CFPB. "Take, for instance, the CFPB's 1071 small business lending rule, a far-reaching regulation that imposes significant costs to our smallest community banks. This unnecessary regulatory expansion undermines the relationship banking model of small financial institutions, while allowing the CFPB to collect, store, and create a public registry of personal data on business owners and consumers in our communities," she wrote.

In a December 2024 hearing with then-Director Rohit Chopra, Senator Britt criticized the small business lending rule and the damage it would pose to community banks and their ability to provide credit and services to Main Street. "The compliance costs alone are literally putting at risk community banks in a multitude of ways . . . I want to make sure the agency continues to look at cumulative impacts and how rules like this hurt the most vulnerable," Senator Britt stated.

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