The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) is a federal law enacted by Congress in 1975 in order to provide the public with greater access to information about mortgage lending. The act requires financial institutions that make residential mortgage loans to report specific information about those loans to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC). This information includes the loan originator, loan purpose, loan amount, and other characteristics such as race and income of applicants. Banks must comply with HMDA by collecting, recording, and reporting this data for each loan application within certain timeframes. Banks must also maintain a record of all the data collected for examination by their regulators.