Industry groups representing mostly smaller mortgage lending institutions had some suggested revisions for the CFPB to take into account as it considers updating its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act resubmission guidelines. “The current resubmission standards are simply impractical and will become even more unattainable when the revised HMDA rule goes into effect,” said the American Bankers Association and the Consumer Bankers Association in a joint comment letter to the bureau. Equally as important, the current standards demand a level of accuracy that far exceeds what is necessary to achieve HMDA’s purpose. “More reasonable data integrity standards will underline our members’ focus on responsibly providing credit to consumers who meet prudent underwriting standards; they will not detract from these vital purposes,” they ...

Before the CFPB’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rules kick in, now would be a great time for the mortgage industry to take steps to improve the HMDA process, according to Kathleen Blanchard, president of Key Compliance Services. “As another HMDA season draws to a close, take some time to consider the HMDA process and how to make it better,” she advised in a recent online blog. “The HMDA Loan Application Register is an important document that is very labor intensive, with monetary penalties attached for inaccuracies. Take a project management approach and create a strong process to get it right.” Blanchard said she sees financial institutions scrubbing LARs at year end, making changes to applications and loans that should ...

The Mortgage Bankers Association last week indicated it plans to press the CFPB for relief on a handful of fronts this year, most notably, the integrated disclosure rule known as TRID, the pending new reporting regime under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and the broader “regulation by enforcement” approach the bureau seems to have taken. “Since the TRID rule’s implementation, a significant number of issues have emerged – mostly due to lingering misperceptions, differing interpretations, and technical ambiguities in the regulation,” the trade group said during a recent press briefing about its priorities for 2016. “It also has become clear that, while the vast majority of lenders were educated about the rule, many other important actors in the real estate transaction ...

Last month’s issuance by the CFPB of a request for information (RFI) regarding its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act resubmission guidelines likely reflects the bureau’s recognition of the additional workload the pending new rule represents, as well as a willingness to hear what the industry has to say about it.In October 2015, the bureau finalized its rule updating the reporting requirements under its HMDA rule, which will significantly expand the amount of information lenders will submit to the agency. “Given these changes, the current resubmission guidelines may need to be updated, and the bureau is seeking feedback on what modifications may be appropriate,” the agency said in early January. But in a recent online blog post, Brooks Bossong, a member ...

If lenders used the seemingly sensible underwriting standards that were in place in 2001, some 1.2 million more mortgages would have been originated in 2014, according to estimates by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Laurie Goodman, director of the HFPC, said lenders have “plenty of room to safely ease credit.” An underwriting index from the HFPC suggests that originators are accepting little risk in terms of borrower or loan characteristics, hindering a recovery in the mortgage market and the broader economy. Lenders note...

Credit union representatives are urging the CFPB to address the increased regulatory burden associated with complying with the bureau’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act regulation, as well as related privacy issues the new rule raises. “The final rule added a significant number of new data points to the reporting requirements established in Regulation C, while modifying almost all the existing data points,” said Alexander Monterrubio, regulatory affairs counsel for the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, in a recent comment letter to the CFPB. While some of the data points were specifically mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, many of them were added at the bureau’s discretion, and that will prove to be problematic. “These discretionary data points have swelled the ...

The CFPB last week announced it wants public feedback on the resubmission of corrected mortgage lending data reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. In October 2015, the CFPB finalized its HMDA rule that significantly expands the range of data will that be reported after becoming effective in 2018, with reporting beginning in 2019. “Given these changes, the current resubmission guidelines may need to be updated, and the bureau is seeking feedback on what modifications may be appropriate,” the agency said. Also, some industry stakeholders have asked whether the CFPB would adjust its mortgage lending data resubmission guidelines to reflect the expanded data that will be submitted under the new rules. The bureau’s request for information (RFI) lists a dozen ...

The CFPB’s new rulemaking related to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act sets the stage for a more comprehensive regulatory environment in which a single mortgage could be monitored as it moves between lenders, is packaged into a security, or is handed off from one servicer to another, according to a new report from the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research. For those who may have missed it, in October 2015, the CFPB revised the reporting requirements under HMDA to include a universal loan identifier (ULI) and the postal address of the property securing each mortgage loan. The revisions also require a legal entity identifier (LEI) for the reporting entity and loan originator and the inclusion of data fields to monitor ...

The CFPB’s ability-to-repay (ATR) rule with its qualified mortgage standard did not materially affect the mortgage market in 2014, according to a recent analysis by two economists at the Federal Reserve based on industry data provided under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Following up on an article published simultaneously with the 2014 HMDA data release in which they found little indication that the new rules had a significant effect on lending in 2014, Fed economists Neil Bhutta and Daniel Ringo extended that analysis by conducting sharper tests around the date of enactment, and around lender-size and loan-pricing thresholds, where treatment of loans under the new rules varies. They found that “lenders responded to the ATR and QM rules, particularly by ...

CFPB Makes Annual Threshold Adjustments Per HMDA, TILA Regulations. Late last month, the CFPB issued two final rules regarding annual threshold adjustments under the implementing regulations for the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Truth in Lending Act. Under the HMDA regulation, Reg. C, the asset-size exemption for banks, savings associations and credit unions will remain at $44 million. As a result, such institutions with assets of $44 million or less as of Dec. 31, 2015, are exempt from collecting HMDA data in 2016. “An institution’s exemption from collecting data in 2016 does not affect its responsibility to report the data it was required to collect in 2015,” the CFPB said. The rule became effective Jan. 1, 2016, and applies ...