Why You Need to Take the CFPB’s TRID Survey

January 23, 2020

Take Survey

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is asking companies that conduct closings covered by the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure Rule (TRID) to take a survey to help the bureau assess the effectiveness of the regulation.

The survey is part of an overall effort to fulfill the bureau’s statutory obligation to assess TRID’s effectiveness in meeting, among other things, its stated goals and the purposes and objectives in Title X of the Dodd-Frank Act. The assessment seeks to evaluate and quantify the costs and benefits of the Rule on institutions (such as closing agents), consumers and the overall mortgage market. The main purpose of the survey is to collect qualitative and quantitative data on institutions’ implementation costs and ongoing costs and changes in consumers’ mortgage borrowing experiences associated with the TRID Rule.

The survey ask questions about annual volume of closings, efforts to comply and the amount spent to implement TRID. To help prepare and determine what resources will be needed to complete the survey, the CFPB has provided a printable version.

To ensure the report is comprehensive and reflects the diversity of the industry, it’s important for as many title and settlement companies as possible to take the survey. More robust data helps ALTA push for a fairer assessment that reflects the industry experience. This will help produce an assessment report that supports ALTA’s desired changes to fix the title fee disclosure and remove the optional tag for owner's title insurance. Deadline to take the survey is March 6, 2020.

The CFPB said this survey is intended for representatives of companies that conduct closings for residential real estate transactions that are secured by mortgage loans covered by TRID. For the purpose of this survey, an institution that conducts the closing or settlement in a real estate transaction may include a law firm, a title company, a settlement company, an escrow company or any other party providing the service of real estate closing. The bureau is also surveying loan originators and officers.

The bureau requests that each institution submit only one response to this survey. To facilitate completion of this survey, the CFPB suggests that the representative(s) who contribute to this single response have knowledge of the business practices of the institution, as well as knowledge of the institution’s efforts to comply with TRID and the costs of these efforts.

How Will Responses Be Used?

Responses will remain confidential as the bureau indicates it will not identify individuals or companies in any reports or other publications that it issues based on this study, nor will such reports or publications disclose information in a manner allowing attribution to specific institutions or individuals. The findings will be characterized as reflecting the views and experiences of industry participants that respond to the survey, not as statistically representative of the overall mortgage market, according to the CFPB.

How Long Will It Take?

The CFPB indicates the survey will take 30 to 75 minutes. The survey will save your work so you can stop and continue again whenever you want—just be sure that cookies are enabled in your web-browser, and that you use the same computer and web-browser you enter the first time you access the survey. Deadline to submit responses is March 6, 2020.

CFPB Webinar

Want to learn how to take the survey? Register for the upcoming webinar on Feb. 13.


Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or communications@alta.org.