Mortgage lenders that expect to close on a pending home-equity line-of-credit near the end of this year may run afoul of the new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if the HELOC doesn’t close on time, compliance experts cautioned this week. That’s because the CFPB created a compliance gap by failing to establish a rule to guide industry conduct during the transition from the current reporting regime to the new one. At least that’s the assessment of some top HMDA professionals during a break-out session at the 2017 American Bankers Association regulatory compliance conference in Orlando this week. The crux of the problem is...

An industry trade group is requesting that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau exclude reverse mortgages from the income-reporting requirement of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association is seeking an exemption similar to the HMDA exemptions for rate spread; Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act status; origination charges; discount points; lender credits; total loan costs; points and fees; prepayment penalty term; and balloon payments. However, should the CFPB require income reporting on reverse mortgages, the NRMLA would want further guidance and clarification. Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans make up over 99 percent of the reverse mortgage market today, and have not dropped below 85 percent since 1993, according to the group. NRMLA’s request is part of a broader comment on ...

Mortgage lenders say they need another year, at least, to prepare for all the new requirements they will confront under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s revised Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule. One of the biggest problems is that the industry is waiting for multiple actions to be completed by the bureau before it can fully implement the new changes and test compliance systems, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a comment letter filed with the CFPB last week. Back in April, the bureau proposed...

The Mortgage Bankers Association called on the CFPB to delay the Jan. 1, 2018, effective date for its new and expanded data collection and reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.“Considering the fact that much remains to be done by the CFPB, including rules and deliverables, MBA respectfully urges the bureau to delay these amendments and the final rule for at least one year in order to provide the bureau and HMDA reporters with sufficient time to complete, implement and test their data collection and reporting processes,” the trade group said in a comment letter to the agency. The additional time “will allow several necessary actions and relevant materials to be delivered by the bureau in time for ...

Mortgage lenders in the U.S. seem to be in a better frame of mind when it comes to their ability to comply with new regulations and to operate in the post-election environment, according to a study from Lenders One, a cooperative of independent mortgage bankers, correspondent lenders and suppliers of mortgage products and services. “Lenders are ready for new regulatory requirements, such as updates to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, with two-thirds (65 percent) indicating they are very prepared for HMDA changes,” Lenders One said. However, the biggest HMDA compliance challenge for lenders involves the additional resources needed to report transactional data, such as home equity lines of credit and dwelling-secured loans for apartments, the survey found. “While lenders are ...

The Financial Services Roundtable advised the Trump administration that the structure of the CFPB needs to be changed, and that the agency should revise a handful of its key mortgage rulemakings, most notably the ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule and the Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure rule, or TRID. The FSR’s call came in a detailed response to President Trump’s Executive Order 13777, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,” issued earlier this year, directing the Treasury Department to conduct an assessment of financial regulations to evaluate how they align with the White House’s core principles of financial regulation.In terms of the bureau itself, the industry organization said the governance structure ...

Treasury Eyeballing CFPB Rules as Part of Regulatory Relief Review. The Treasury Department is focused on a wide range of regulatory requirements where simple communication and clarification of the regulatory intent is warranted, such as the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule, the integrated disclosure rule and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule, Craig Phillips, counselor to the Treasury secretary, said during a symposium in New York City last week, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.... Dodd-Frank Changes to be Discussed. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, is scheduled to discuss his Dodd-Frank Act alternative, H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, Tuesday of this week at an event at the American Enterprise Institute....

The American Bankers Association last week issued the first industry call for the CFPB to delay implementation of its pending Home Mortgage Disclosure Act final rule in its entirety, citing compliance difficulties and concerns about consumer data privacy. The call came in a white paper submitted to the Treasury Department as part of the banking industry’s response to President Trump’s executive order earlier this year, EO 13772, outlining “core principles” for financial regulation. The ABA has three main gripes about the HMDA rule, most of which is scheduled to take effect in January 2018. First, it said that collecting all of the required data will be costly. “Although it is not simple to distill the cost estimates from the bureau’s ...

The CFPB has put out a proposed rule to help mortgage lenders comply with the updates it made to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act regulation back in 2015, most of which haven’t even taken effect yet. “The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act shines a much-needed spotlight on the mortgage market, which is the largest consumer financial market in the world,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Today’s proposal reflects the bureau’s ongoing and substantive engagement with stakeholders in the marketplace, and will help industry meet its new reporting obligations.” Among the suggested alterations in the agency’s proposed rule is the clarification of certain key terms, such as “temporary financing.” The CFPB wants to amend the commentary to the current final rule to ...

Industry representatives thanked the CFPB for making an effort to facilitate compliance with the pending Home Mortgage Disclosure Act final rule, most of which takes effect Jan. 1, 2018. However, the fact that revisions are being offered at all is a sign that the bureau just cannot get it right, according to some officials. Anne Canfield, executive director of the Consumer Mortgage Coalition, said her membership always appreciates any effort any of the regulators make to improve a regulation. “However, the CFPB’s proposed amendments to its HMDA regulation falls far short of what is needed,” she said. One of the CMC’s concerns is that since the bureau has not identified what it intends to do with the data, how does ...