Mortgage industry participants should expect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to cast both a wider and deeper dragnet of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data compared to the Federal Reserve’s oversight of the nearly 40-year-old law, according to CoreLogic. A new CoreLogic report forecasts a more muscular collection of industry information following the Dodd-Frank Act’s transfer of HMDA supervision and enforcement from the Fed to the bureau, including a significant shift in ...
The CFPB is continuing its work to develop a final rulemaking to add certain data elements to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting requirements. However, a final rule will not come out this year, a top bureau official told industry representatives last week. Speaking at the American Bankers Association’s government relations conference in Washington, DC, last week, Kathleen Ryan, deputy assistant director in the bureau’s Office of Regulations, reminded attendees that Dodd-Frank required the CFPB to add
Lenders will face increased fair-lending scrutiny even if they stick to originating loans that meet qualified-mortgage requirements, according to industry attorneys. While federal regulators have stated that a lender’s QM-only policy won’t increase fair-lending risk, a number of factors beyond QMs have prompted an increased focus on fair-lending issues. During a webinar this week hosted by Inside Mortgage Finance, Andrew Sandler, chairman and executive partner at the law firm of BuckleySandler, said he has never seen regulators work more closely together on fair-lending issues. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are doing joint investigations. Sandler said...
Some of the largest servicers could be violating fair-lending laws, according to an analysis by a the Government Accountability Office, while an alphabet soup of federal regulators overseeing fair lending issues appears to be treating servicing concerns like a hot potato. In a report issued late last week, the GAO said its analysis of loan-level data for the four largest servicers participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program suggests that there are fair-lending concerns that merit further examination. While the GAO didnt identify the servicers, the four largest HAMP servicers are Ocwen Loan Servicing, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, according to the Treasury. The GAO found...
Just when mortgage lenders thought it was safe to go back in the water, the CFPB revealed a big shark fin earlier this month by indicating it intends to develop additional reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. As Congress required in the Dodd-Frank Act, we are considering proposing rules that would make changes in how financial institutions report their mortgage activity, CFPB Director Richard Cordray said. One of the main purposes of this effort is to gain greater insight into issues about access to credit....
As part of the CFPBs new push for additional reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the bureau, in conjunction with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, has released a new, fairly robust online tool to enable interested parties to explore mortgage data in ways previously unavailable. Users now have more flexibility in how they sift through the data. They can filter it, download it, create summary tables, and share the results, said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The tool uses a format that is...
HMDA Rulemaking on Consumer Advisory Board Agenda. The CFPB has scheduled a Consumer Advisory Board meeting for Feb. 26-27, at the Constitution Center (Auditorium), 400 7th Street SW, Washington, DC. The first day of the event is closed to the public. A close look at the agenda indicates an hour has been set aside for some discussion on a possible Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rulemaking. Speakers scheduled during that session include Mortgage Data Assets Team Lead Ren Essene and Senior Counsel Joan Kayagil. A session later in the day will be...
Future changes to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act regulations may shed more light on how lenders adapt to the new ability-to-repay rule, as well as assessing the role of credit history and payment burden in the lending process and mortgage pricing. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last week took the opening steps in overhauling HMDA reporting requirements under provisions included in the Dodd-Frank Act. Among the changes on the table are disclosing the loan term, total points and fees, the length of any teaser or introductory rate, and the applicant or borrowers age and credit score. Also, the CFPB is...
Mortgage industry attorneys expect to see more Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement actions in the future stemming from compliance deficiencies that were dug up during the supervisory examination process. One of the things that we saw towards the last quarter of 2013 was a couple of enforcement actions which grew directly out of supervisory exams, Allyson Baker, a partner in the litigation group at the Venable law firm, said during a webinar this week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance. Baker, formerly an enforcement attorney with the CFPB, was referencing...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has decided to streamline its post-examination reporting, apparently in response to banker concerns about prompt feedback regarding lender compliance with federal consumer financial laws. In a new supervisory highlights report, the CFPB said it would stop using written recommendations opting for oral, on‐site guidance instead. The bureau also will combine all issues it expects a bank to address into a single section called matters requiring attention. The agency also decided...