Consumer complaints to the CFPB fell by double digits in nearly every category during the fourth quarter of 2015, with total complaints down 20.1 percent for the period, despite the one area that showed an increase – prepaid cards – skyrocketing 242.1 percent, according to the latest analysis by Inside the CFPB. However, the lending industry’s performance vis-à-vis consumers generally deteriorated in most categories on an annual basis, the latest data from the CFPB consumer complaint database show.Leading the improved performance during 4Q15 was the student loan sector, which saw gripes drop by a huge 31.7 percent, followed by declines in the debt collection space (off 27.5 percent), and in the home mortgages and credit report categories, both of which saw ...

Technical Corrections to the TRID Made With No Fanfare. Over the holidays, the CFPB quietly made what it characterized as “non-substantial” technical corrections to its integrated mortgage disclosures final rule under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (Regulation X) and the Truth in Lending Act (Regulation Z). The November 2013 publication of the bureau’s TRID rule in the Federal Register resulted in “several unintended deletions of existing regulatory text from Reg. Z and the official interpretations (commentary) in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and, in one case, the omission of regulatory language in the TRID from the CFR,” said the CFPB. To correct the CFR, the bureau republished the deleted and omitted text, consistent with the agency’s intent in ...

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 ...

Residential lenders issued a record $435.8 billion of Ginnie Mae securities in 2015, according to Inside MBS & ABS, a handsome 47 percent increase from the prior year.

In addition to misrepresenting prices sought by buyers and sellers of MBS, the DOJ said Siegel and co-conspirators misrepresented that bonds held in RBS’s inventory were being offered for sale by a fictitious third-party seller…

Specifically, the bureau’s notice asks for public comment on the agency’s use of resubmission error thresholds and how they should be calculated.

DR Horton’s share price is holding up fairly well, but companies such as KB Homes, Pulte and Toll Brothers are trading near their 52-week lows.

In the end, 2015 produced a solid, if unspectacular, supply of new agency single-family MBS and non-mortgage ABS after peaking in the second quarter of the year. A total of $1.498 trillion of single-family MBS and non-mortgage ABS were issued in 2015, a 28.1 percent increase from the year before, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. But 2014 ranked as the weakest year since the financial meltdown, and the 2015 output was the fourth lowest in the 21st century during a period of historically low interest rates and steady economic growth. Most components of the market slowed...[Includes three data tables]

The Department of Justice announced in December that a structured finance supervisor at RBS Securities pleaded guilty to participating in a multi-million dollar securities fraud scheme and is cooperating with the government’s ongoing investigation. Adam Siegel was co-head of U.S. ABS, MBS and commercial MBS trading at RBS between 2008 and 2014. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut said Siegel admitted that he and others conspired to increase RBS’s profits on trades of residential MBS and collateralized loan obligations at the expense of customers. “His crime included...