LOAN ESTIMATE AND CLOSING DISCLOSURE

What We Did

• Worked with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on its first major consumer project: developing two disclosures in English and Spanish that consumers could use to understand, shop, and compare.

• Conducted iterative qualitative testing of the disclosures with 114 consumers and lenders/brokers.

• Conducted a separate quantitative validation study to assess how the disclosures performed against the current forms.

Key Results

• Participants used the new forms to make sophisticated tradeoffs between loans and to accurately identify basic loan facts.

• Integrated disclosures outperformed the current disclosures in testing – many at a statistically significant level.

• The Loan Estimate won the Center for Plain Language’s 2014 Grand ClearMark Award for the best plain language document in the U.S.

• The Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure are in use with every financial institution in the U.S. (If you purchase or refinance a home, you will use these forms!)