The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s failure to recognize and quickly provide law enforcement authorities with information about allegations of fraud and other potential criminal conduct presents a “significant risk” for the agency and the government-sponsored enterprises it regulates, concluded the FHFA’s watchdog. The Office of the Inspector General of the FHFA this week issued...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General continued to find weaknesses during a second audit of FHA’s Title II single-family lender renewal process despite steps already taken by the agency to strengthen its controls. In a new report released last week, HUD’s internal watchdog recommended additional improvements, some of which were rejected...

Nearly a year after the Dodd-Frank Act authorized $1 billion in funding, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the start of the Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program this week, offering mortgage aid to unemployed homeowners in 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. The EHLP is to aid homeowners who, due to a reduction in income, are unemployed or underemployed and at risk of foreclosure. The program is administered...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may have been more intensively involved in the 50-state servicer settlement discussions than it has publicly let on, and has tried to keep at least some of its contact with the state attorneys general secret, emails from several state agencies seem to suggest...

Federal banking regulators have the unenviable task of harmonizing two mortgage disclosure documents – one under the Truth in Lending Act and one under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act – for consumers who generally won’t read them and don’t fully understand them when they do. And mortgage lenders have the same kinds of stubborn obstacles to overcome if they’re going to be able to more effectively design and successfully market products consumers will respond…

The Treasury Department announced that, beginning this month, it is withholding financial incentives for three top mortgage servicers, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo Bank, because their performance in the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable Program was considered inadequate...

The White House is reportedly considering nominating former banker Raj Date, a top deputy of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau interim head Elizabeth Warren, to be the first formal director of the nascent agency...

Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Company chalked one up in the win column in some litigation it’s having with Bank of America over MGIC’s decision to rescind flow-policy coverage of 1,400 or so mortgages that were originated by Countrywide between 2006 and 2008...

Former Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Treasurer Desiree Brown, and former TBW President Raymond Bowman, have been sentenced to 72 months and 30 months in prison, respectively, for their roles in a fraud scheme totaling more than $2.9 billion that contributed to the failures of TBW and Colonial Bank...

Jurisprudence related to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems continues to evolve, but a majority of courts are validating the role MERS plays in the nation’s mortgage finance system, according to a new analysis of recent cases by law firm K&L Gates...