The new borrower profile

The first step in analyzing lender outreach to racial and ethnic markets is usually looking atHMDA, Messerli said. Some lenders can be gun shy about using HMDA for anything butcompliance and worry that reaching out to one group could be perceived as a bias.

"They're worried about targeting and you do have to be very careful, but what they don't realize is they are already marketing to a particular demographic, which is usually the one that they are made up of, said Messerli.