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Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require, subject to rules prescribed by the Bureau, financial institutions to report information concerning credit applications made by women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses. ECOA is a critical law that protects small business owners, including from unlawful discrimination, in their access to and use of credit.  Section 1071 requires that certain data be collected, maintained, and reported to the Bureau, including whether the applicant is a women-owned, minority-owned, or small business; the number of the application and date the application was received; the type and purpose of the loan or credit applied for; the amount of credit applied for and approved; the type of action taken with respect to the application and the date of such action; the census tract of the applicant’s principal place of business; the gross annual revenue of the business; and the race, sex, and ethnicity of the principal owners of the business. Section 1071 also provides authority for the Bureau to require any additional data that the Bureau determines would aid in fulfilling its statutory purposes. The Bureau may adopt exceptions to any requirement of section 1071 and may exempt any financial institution from its requirements, as the Bureau deems necessary or appropriate to carry out section 1071’s purposes. The Bureau has been working on this important and complex rulemaking for a number of years, including through research, supervisory work, policy development, and engagement seeking comment and information from the public, small business lenders, and small businesses themselves, including minority- and women-owned small businesses.  The Bureau made significant progress on implementing section 1071 since the Spring 2021 Unified Agenda was published.  On October 8, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was published in the Federal Register which would, if finalized as proposed, require financial institutions to report the amount and type of small business credit applied for and extended, demographic information about small business credit applicants, and key elements of the price of the credit offered, among other things.  If finalized, the rule would also advance the goals of promoting racial and economic equity and supporting underserved, vulnerable, and marginalized communities, in that it would provide comprehensive small business lending data to help protect small business owners, including from unlawful discrimination, in their access to and use of fair and affordable credit.  The Bureau’s next action for the section 1071 rulemaking is to review and consider the comments submitted in response to the proposed rule.