Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, has raised ethical questions about Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney’s recent appearance at a “closed-door event” where he reportedly discussed midterm elections with Republican officials and donors. Warren, a harsh Mulvaney critic, said his attendance at the event in New York City on Sept. 8 may have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain employees in the executive branch of the federal government from engaging ...

The CFPB’s recent efforts to create a regulatory sandbox for financial technology (fintech) companies would benefit the mortgage industry, said a former CFPB attorney. Ever since the agency hired Paul Watkins, a lawyer who helped establish the nation’s first regulatory sandbox for fintech companies, to lead its Office of Innovation in July, fintech regulation has become an area of focus at the bureau. The CFPB in August joined a global fintech regulatory initiative ...

The CFPB recently began putting more emphasis on protecting “credit-invisible” consumers and how financial innovation might expand access to credit. Credit-invisible consumers are those without an established credit history with the three national credit reporting agencies who therefore cannot be scored by most traditional credit scoring models. The first CFPB advisory committees meeting this year – held after all the chaos of disbanding and reconstitution ...

While the CFPB is responsible for ensuring fairness to American consumers in their financial affairs, the agency is now facing workplace discrimination and retaliation charges from former and current agency employees. A class action complaint was filed against the CFPB and Acting Director Mick Mulvaney in September, alleging discrimination and retaliation against minority and female workers. The complaint was filed to the U.S. District Court for the ...

CFPB to Open Office in Atlanta, Likely to Relocate Over 100 Employees. The CFPB recently announced plans to open a new office in Atlanta as its southeast regional headquarters. The relocation is expected to take place in late 2019. The southeast regional team is currently housed in the bureau’s DC headquarters. The CFPB said the relocation will align the bureau with its regulatory partners that already have a regional presence in Atlanta [Includes two briefs] ...

The regular fraud reports created by the GSEs are not being put to good use by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said the FHFA Office of Inspector General. In fact, FHFA’s examiners don’t even review the reports when supervising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac activities. In an evaluation report published earlier this week, the IG said the FHFA does not make a documented, systematic use of the content of monthly and quarterly fraud reports that could be helpful for examiners. There’s no specific methodology for fraud detection and reporting, only requiring the GSEs to maintain adequate and efficient internal controls, policies, procedures and an operational training...

California remained the top state for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac activity in the first six months of 2018 as volume reached $68.22 billion, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. About 44.4 percent was from the purchase market and 20.8 percent were first-time homebuyers. Texas trailed in second place with $27.57 billion in volume with 69.0 percent of that being attributed to the purchase market. Texas was followed closely by Florida with $25.01 billion. Rounding out the top five for GSE volume were Washington ($16.08 billion) and Colorado ($14.99 billion).

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s examination program has not made any progress in seven years, according to new report by the FHFA’s Office of Inspector General, which said the number of commissioned examiners has actually decreased. The FHFA is currently conducting an internal review of the program. The IG has been asking the FHFA to beef up its examinations program since 2011. As a result, in 2013 the agency developed its own Housing Finance Examiner Commission Program that offered classroom courses, on-the-job training and final examinations. But the program hasn’t been successful, according to data obtained from the IG.

Fannie Mae launched a $10 million innovation challenge this week asking for ideas on healthy affordable housing. The initiative is a two-year commitment to source new ideas related to addressing affordable housing needs by reaching outside of Fannie and its traditional partners. “We recognize the value in breaking down silos. We want to work with new partners on issues that are inextricably linked to affordable housing in order to create comprehensive solutions,” said Fannie’s Vice President of Sustainable Communities Maria Evans. She went on to say that the GSE is incubating innovative ideas that directly address its mission to bring affordability and stability to underserved areas...

Freddie Expands Community Land Trust Mortgage Offering. Freddie Mac announced this week that it’s expanding its support for shared-equity homeownership programs that focus on long-term affordability. The GSE said it will begin purchasing Community Land Trust Mortgages to facilitate the preservation of affordable housing in low- to mid-income markets across the country. In an era of tight housing inventory and rising home prices, Freddie noted that shared-equity homeownership offers prospective buyers a way to become homeowners and lenders an opportunity to support underserved communities. “In developing the Community Land Trust Mortgage offering we were able to take a fresh look at existing mortgage products in this space, listen to the...