[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 216 (Thursday, November 7, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 66931-66932]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-26697]


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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION


Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for OMB 
Review; Comment Request

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission.

ACTION: Notice and request for comment.

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SUMMARY: In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, 
the FTC is seeking public comments on its request to OMB for a three-
year extension of the current PRA clearance for the information 
collection requirements contained in Regulation N. That clearance 
expires on November 30, 2013. The FTC's current PRA clearance (OMB 
Control Number 3084-0156) for Regulation N is under the FTC's Mortgage 
Acts and Practices--Advertising Rule, which was republished by the CFPB 
as Regulation N on December 16, 2011, and became effective December 30, 
2011. The Commission rescinded the Mortgage Acts and Practices--
Advertising Rule on, and effective, April 13, 2012.

DATES: Comments must be received by December 9, 2013.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file a comment online or on paper, by 
following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information or 
copies of the proposed information requirements should be addressed to 
Carole L. Reynolds, Attorney, Division of Financial Practices, Bureau 
of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania 
Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20580, (202) 326-3230.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
    Title: Mortgage Acts and Practices--Advertising (Regulation N), 12 
CFR 1014.
    OMB Control Number: 3084-0156.
    Type of Review: Extension of a currently approved collection.
    Abstract: The FTC's Mortgage Acts and Practices--Advertising Rule, 
16 CFR 321, was issued by the FTC on July 19, 2011, at www.ftc.gov, 
published in the Federal Register, 76 FR 43845, and became effective on 
August 19, 2011.
    The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 
2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) \1\ substantially changed the federal legal 
framework for financial services providers. Among the changes, the 
Dodd-Frank Act transferred to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 
(CFPB) the Commission's rulemaking authority under section 626 of the 
2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act on July 21, 2011. As a result, the CFPB 
republished the Mortgage Acts and Practices--Advertising Rule, at 12 
CFR 1014, which became effective December 30, 2011. 76 FR 78130. 
Thereafter, the Commission rescinded its Rule on, and effective, April 
13, 2012. 77 FR 22200. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the FTC retains its 
authority to bring law enforcement actions to enforce Regulation N.\2\ 
The FTC and the CFPB share enforcement authority for Regulation N and 
thus the CFPB has incorporated into its recently approved burden 
estimates \3\ for Regulation N one half of the FTC's pre-existing 
cleared burden estimates.
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    \1\ Public Law 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376 (2010).
    \2\ The Commission also retained its authority to enforce the 
Mortgage Acts and Practices--Advertising Rule from the Rule's 
issuance in July 2011 until the CFPB's republished rule, Regulation 
N, became effective on December 30, 2011. See infra note 11.
    \3\ The CFPB clearance for their information collections 
associated with Regulation N was approved by the OMB on July 25, 
2012 (OMB Control Number 3170-0009) through July 31, 2015.
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    Regulation N's recordkeeping requirements constitute a ``collection 
of information'' \4\ for purposes of the PRA.\5\ The Rule does not 
impose a disclosure requirement.
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    \4\ Section 1014.5 of the Rule sets forth the recordkeeping 
requirements.
    \5\ See 44 U.S.C. 3502(3)(A).
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    Regulation N requires covered persons to retain: (1) Copies of 
materially different commercial communications and related materials, 
regarding any term of any mortgage credit product, that the person made 
or disseminated during the relevant time period; (2) documents 
describing or evidencing all mortgage credit products available to 
consumers during the relevant time period; and (3) documents describing 
or evidencing all additional products or services (such as credit 
insurance or credit disability insurance) that are or may be offered or 
provided with the mortgage credit products available to consumers 
during the relevant time period. A failure to keep such records would 
be an independent violation of the Rule.
    Commission staff believes these recordkeeping requirements pertain 
to records that are usual and customary and kept in the ordinary course 
of business for many covered persons, such as mortgage brokers, 
lenders, and servicers.\6\ As to these persons, the retention of these 
documents does not constitute a ``collection of information,'' as 
defined by OMB's regulations that implement the PRA.\7\ Other covered 
persons, however, such as real estate agents and brokers, advertising 
agencies, home builders, lead generators, rate aggregators, and others, 
may not currently maintain these records in the ordinary course of 
business. Thus, the recordkeeping requirements for those persons would 
constitute a ``collection of information.''
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    \6\ Some covered persons, particularly mortgage brokers and 
lenders, are subject to state recordkeeping requirements for 
mortgage advertisements. See, e.g., Fla. Stat. 494.00165 (2012); 
Ind. Code Ann. 23-2-5-18 (2012); Kan. Stat. Ann. 9-2208 (2012); 
Minn. Stat. 58.14 (2012); Wash. Rev. Code 19.146.060 (2013). Many 
mortgage brokers, lenders, and servicers are also subject to state 
recordkeeping requirements for mortgage transactions and related 
documents, and these may include descriptions of mortgage credit 
products. See, e.g., Mich. Comp. Laws Serv. 445.1671 (2013); N.Y. 
Banking Law 597 (Consol. 2012); Tenn. Code Ann. 45-13-206 (2013). In 
addition, lenders and mortgagees approved by the FHA must retain 
copies of all print and electronic advertisements and promotional 
materials for a period of two years from the date the materials are 
circulated or used to advertise. See 24 CFR 202.
    \7\ See 44 U.S.C. 3502(3)(A); 5 CFR 1320.3(b)(2).
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    The information retained under the Rule's recordkeeping 
requirements is used by the Commission to substantiate compliance with 
the Rule and may also provide a basis for the Commission to bring an 
enforcement action. Without the required records, it would be difficult 
either to ensure that entities are complying with the Rule's 
requirements or to bring enforcement actions based on violations of the 
Rule.
    On August 1, 2013, the Commission sought comment on the Rule's 
information collection requirements.\8\ No comments were received.
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    \8\ See 78 FR 46583.

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[[Page 66932]]

    As required by OMB regulations, 5 CFR Part 1320, the FTC is 
providing this second opportunity for public comment.
    Likely Respondents: Real estate agents and brokers, advertising 
agencies, home builders, lead generators, rate aggregators, and others 
that may provide commercial communications regarding mortgage credit 
product terms.\9\
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    \9\ The Commission does not know what percentage of these 
persons are, in fact, engaged in covered conduct under the Rule, 
i.e., providing commercial communications about mortgage credit 
product terms. For purposes of these estimates, the Commission has 
assumed all of them are covered by the recordkeeping provisions and 
are not retaining these records in the ordinary course of business.
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    Estimated Annual Hours Burden: 1,800,000 hours.
     Derived from 1.2 million likely respondents \10\ x 
approximately 3 hours each respondent per year to do these tasks = 3.6 
million hours.
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    \10\ No general source provides precise numbers of the various 
categories of covered persons. Commission staff, therefore, has used 
the following sources and inputs to arrive at this estimated total: 
(1) 1 million real estate brokers and agents--from the National 
Association of Realtors, see http://www.realtor.org (last visited 
June 24, 2013) ; (2) 140,000 home builders--from the National 
Association of Home Builders, see http://www.NAHB.org (last visited 
June 24, 2013); (3) 350 finance companies--from the American 
Financial Services Association, see http://www.afsaonline.org (last 
visited June 24, 2013); (4) 29,770 advertising agencies--from the 
North American Industry Classification System Association's database 
of U.S. businesses, see http://www.naics.com (last visited June 24, 
2013); (5) 1,000 lead generators and rate aggregators--based on 
staff's administrative experience. These inputs add to 1,171,120; 
for rounding, and to account further for potentially unspecified 
other covered persons, however, staff has increased the resulting 
total to 1.2 million.
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     Since the FTC shares enforcement authority with the CFPB 
for Regulation N, the FTC's allotted PRA burden is 1,800,000 annual 
hours.\11\
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    \11\ This burden estimate includes recordkeeping requirements of 
the FTC's Mortgage Acts and Practices Rule for the period from 
December 1, 2013--December 29, 2013. The Commission retained its 
authority to enforce the Mortgage Acts and Practices--Advertising 
Rule from the Rule's issuance in July 2011 until the CFPB's 
republished rule, Regulation N, became effective on December 30, 
2011. Thus, the Commission's Rule had a correlative two-year 
recordkeeping for the above period concluding on December 29, 2013. 
Burden imposed on covered entities after that time are covered by 
the same recordkeeping requirements under Regulation N, which 
commenced December 30, 2011.
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    Estimated Annual Cost Burden: $24,264,000, which is derived from 
1.8 million hours x $13.48 per hour.\12\
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    \12\ This estimate is based on mean hourly wages for office 
support file clerks provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. See 
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages--
May 2012, table 1 (``National employment and wage data from the 
Occupational Employment Statistics survey by occupation,'' released 
Mar. 29, 2013), available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf.
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Request for Comment

    You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to 
consider your comment, we must receive it on or before December 9, 
2013. Write ``Regulation N: FTC File No. P134811; K05'' on your 
comment. Your comment--including your name and your state--will be 
placed on the public record of this proceeding, including, to the 
extent practicable, on the public Commission Web site, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. As a matter of discretion, the 
Commission tries to remove individuals' home contact information from 
comments before placing them on the Commission Web site.
    Because your comment will be made public, you are solely 
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any 
sensitive personal information, such as anyone's Social Security 
number, date of birth, driver's license number or other state 
identification number or foreign country equivalent, passport number, 
financial account number, or credit or debit card number. You are also 
solely responsible for making sure that your comment does not include 
any sensitive health information, like medical records or other 
individually identifiable health information. In addition, do not 
include any ``[t]rade secret or any commercial or financial information 
which is * * * privileged or confidential,'' as discussed in Section 
6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 
4.10(a)(2). In particular, do not include competitively sensitive 
information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas, 
patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.
    If you want the Commission to give your comment confidential 
treatment, you must file it in paper form, with a request for 
confidential treatment, and you are required to follow the procedure 
explained in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c). Your comment will be kept 
confidential only if the FTC General Counsel, in his or her sole 
discretion, grants your request in accordance with the law and the 
public interest.
    Postal mail addressed to the Commission is subject to delay due to 
heightened security screening. As a result, we encourage you to submit 
your comment online, or to send it to the Commission by courier or 
overnight service. To make sure that the Commission considers your 
online comment, you must file it at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/regulationnpra2, by following the instructions on the web-based 
form. If this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov, you also 
may file a comment through that Web site.
    If you file your comment on paper, write ``Regulation N: FTC File 
No. P134811; K05'' on your comment and on the envelope, and mail or 
deliver it to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office 
of the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex J), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., 
Washington, DC 20580. If possible, submit your paper comment to the 
Commission by courier or overnight service.
    Visit the Commission Web site at http://www.ftc.gov to read this 
Notice. The FTC Act and other laws that the Commission administers 
permit the collection of public comments to consider and use in this 
proceeding as appropriate. The Commission will consider all timely and 
responsive public comments that it receives on or before December 9, 
2013. You can find more information, including routine uses permitted 
by the Privacy Act, in the Commission's privacy policy, at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.shtm.
    Comments on the information collection requirements subject to 
review under the PRA should also be submitted to OMB. If sent by U.S. 
mail, address comments to: Office of Information and Regulatory 
Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, Attention: Desk Officer for 
the Federal Trade Commission, New Executive Office Building, Docket 
Library, Room 10102, 725 17th Street NW., Washington, DC 20503. 
Comments sent to OMB by U.S. postal mail, however, are subject to 
delays due to heightened security precautions. Thus, comments instead 
should be sent by facsimile to (202) 395-5167.

David C. Shonka,
Principal Deputy General Counsel.
[FR Doc. 2013-26697 Filed 11-6-13; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6750-01-P