A credit union's HMDA data is used to determine if it is a statistical outlier compared to other institutions; the statistical outlier label requires the NCUA, by law, to take a closer look at fair lending practices.

The release is the first to compare lending statistics against census tract delineations and population and housing characteristic data from the 2010 Census and from the American Community Survey, the FFIEC said in a release.

For the past decade, such information was drawn from the 2000 Census. Users of HMDA data should be aware that boundary changes and updates to the population and housing characteristics of census tracts complicate analysis, the FFIEC said.

For 2012, the number of reporting institutions of 7,400 fell 3% from 2011, continuing a downward trend since 2006 when HMDA coverage included more than 8,900 lenders. The decline reflects mergers, acquisitions and the failure of some institutions, the FFIEC said.

The 2012 data includes information on 15.3 million home loan applications, nearly 9.8 million resulting originations and 3.2 million loan purchases. The data also includes information on about 477,000 mortgage preapproval requests.

Total originated loans increased by about 2.7 million, or 38% compared to 2011, in part because of a 54% increase in the number of refinanced loans. Home purchase lending also increased, but by a more modest 13%.

Black and Hispanic applicants experienced higher denial rates than non-Hispanic white applicants, according to the 2012 data. The denial rate for Asian applicants was virtually the same as the corresponding denial rate for non-Hispanic white applicants. These relationships are similar to those found in earlier years, the FFIEC said.