Unfortunately, there is no clear guidance on the public notices required at loan production offices (though there is some guidance on the notices required at branches). With that in mind, here are our thoughts:

1. Illinois Employment Notices: Your LPO, as with all of your organization’s Illinois offices, may need to post the following employment notices (albeit not in the lobby — the employee break room is sufficient):

•  “Your Rights Under Illinois Employment Laws” notice from the Illinois Department of Labor, which combines required notices from six different Illinois laws (the Wage Payment and Collection Act, Child Labor Law, Minimum Wage Law, Equal Pay Act, Victims’ Economic Security and Safety Act, and the One Day Rest in Seven Act).
  • Spanish version

• Workers’ Compensation Notice from the Workers’ Compensation Commission

• Unemployment Insurance Benefits Notice from the Illinois Department of Employment Security

• Smoke Free Illinois Act poster from the Illinois Department of Public Health
  • Spanish version
     
• Additional Federal Posters: (1) Equal Employment Opportunity (required for employers with 15 or more employees), (2) Occupational Safety & Health Act, (3) Family Medical Leave Act (required for employers with 50 or more employees), (4) Employee Polygraph Protection Act, (5) Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Federal Minimum Wage.

The Illinois Department of Labor’s website has a useful page with links to all required Illinois notices (as well as federal notices), with contact information for each of the relevant state agencies. Note that some of the notices linked to on this page may not apply to your bank (such as the “Emergency Care for Choking” poster, which is required only at food-service establishments).

2. CIP Notice: The CIP rules provide that you give your customers notice of the customer identification requirements “before opening an account” (a loan account is considered opened when the bank enters into an enforceable agreement to make the loan). You can give this notice in different ways. One method is to post a CIP notice in the lobby. Another is to provide the notice before or when the loan documents are signed. If your bank provides notice to customers of the customer identification rules by posting notices in its branch lobbies, then you should post the CIP notice in the LPO’s lobby, too.

3. Annual Disclosure Statements, CRA Notice, and HMDA Notice: The requirements to post the Annual Disclosure Statement, HMDA, and CRA notices appear to apply only to a bank’s main office and “branches.” A loan production office is not, technically, a branch, so it appears to us that these notices do not need to be posted in your LPO’s lobby. However, we are not aware of any clear interpretations on this point, so you may want to take a conservative approach and post these notices in your LPO, or discuss this question with your primary federal regulator.

4. Equal Housing Opportunity/Equal Housing Lender Notice: The FDIC’s rule generally requires a bank extending loans secured by a dwelling to post one of these notices “where either deposits are received or loans are made” — which means at branches. Since your bank’s LPO is not a branch, the FDIC rule does not appear to require you to post either notice at the LPO. However, don’t forget that HUD also has rules for these posters. HUD requires that one of these posters be placed so as to be “readily apparent to all persons seeking . . . to engage in residential real estate-related transactions . . . .” Clearly, if the LPO accepts residential loan applications, one of these notices should be posted in the LPO’s lobby. It is less clear to us whether HUD would require either notice to be posted at an LPO if residential loan applications are not taken at the LPO but are taken elsewhere by the organization. You may want to discuss this question with HUD, or again, you could take the conservative approach and post one of these notices in the LPO lobby, as well.