The CFPB's 5,000-loan exemption released Thursday as part of the bureau's mortgage servicing final rules would provide regulatory relief to nearly all credit unions, according to Andrew Bolton, senior industry analyst for Washington-based firm Callahan & Associates.

Bolton told Credit union Times he arrived at the estimate of mortgage loans serviced by credit unions by dividing total dollar amount of mortgages serviced by the average outstanding mortgage loan balance.

Although the method assumes serviced mortgages sold to the secondary market average have the same outstanding balances as those kept on the books, the analyst said it's the best way to arrive at an answer, given the data available.

Only 62% of credit unions had outstanding mortgages on their books as of Sept. 30, 2012, Bolton said. Additionally, only 16.4% of credit unions had sold at least one mortgage loan during the first nine months of last year.

“For most credit unions, (5,000) is a large number of mortgage loans to be servicing,” he said.

The CFPB released a summary of its final mortgage servicing rules early Thursday, and said it would release the full text of the rules later in the day. The regulator did not say which parts of the rule would be subject to the exemption.