The proposal

The Federal Housing Finance Agency published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register on July 13, 2026 proposing to repeal 12 CFR Part 1272, the Federal Home Loan Bank New Business Activities regulation, under RIN 2590-AB52. Comments were accepted through August 12, 2026, and the comment period has since closed.

Part 1272 requires a Federal Home Loan Bank to submit notice to the agency before commencing a new business activity that carries risk the bank has not previously managed. The review was conducted pursuant to a 2025 executive order directing federal agencies to identify and repeal regulations that impose unnecessary burdens.

The agency's evidence

FHFA stated that the Home Loan Banks submitted only two new-business-activity notices in the past five years, and that in both cases the agency determined the bank capable of managing the risk; the agency has not rejected any such notice on unmanageable-risk grounds in the past decade.

Those two figures are the whole argument, and they cut both ways. A rule invoked twice in five years and never used to block anything may be dead weight. It may equally be a rule that works by deterrence, discouraging proposals that would not survive review before they are ever filed. Usage statistics cannot distinguish between the two, and the notice does not attempt to.

Where the rule came from

The regulation originates in a rule adopted in 2000 implementing the Federal Home Loan Bank System Modernization Act of 1999. Its current form dates to a 2016 final rule that narrowed its scope and redesignated it as Part 1272.

The Home Loan Banks are cooperatively owned wholesale lenders that provide collateralised advances to member banks, credit unions and insurers. Their government-sponsored status and implied funding advantage are the reason their permitted activities have historically been fenced.

FHFA framed the repeal as one of several actions responding to a set of White House directives issued in early 2025. The agency's proposal cites Executive Order 14219 of February 19, 2025, which requires federal agencies to review their regulations and repeal those inconsistent with law or administration policy, and Executive Order 14192 of January 31, 2025, which sets deregulatory policy aimed at lowering the cost of housing and expanding housing supply [4](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-07-13/pdf/2026-14035.pdf). The reginfo.gov entry for the rulemaking, RIN 2590-AB52, formally designates the repeal as “Deregulatory” under that framework and lists 12 U.S.C. 4513 and 4526 as FHFA's legal authority for the change [5](https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?RIN=2590-AB52&pubId=202510).

The comment record

FHFA received only five comments on the proposal by the August 12 deadline — a strikingly thin record for a federal rulemaking that some agencies see draw hundreds or thousands of submissions. Most of the five supported repeal.

The Council of Federal Home Loan Banks and the Defense Credit Union Council both called the existing notice framework duplicative and unnecessary. The Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA) filed a comment supporting repeal but urging FHFA to preserve guardrails, and separately used the occasion to press FHFA to extend Home Loan Bank membership eligibility to independent mortgage banks — a long-running industry objective the proposed rule does not address. One commenter, the Main Street Foundation's Center for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement, urged the agency to retain core risk-management safeguards even while streamlining the notice process.

As of September 22, 2026, FHFA had not published a final rule; the proposal remains pending in the notice-and-comment stage with the record closed.