FirstKey Mortgage, which has big plans in the non-agency space that include lending outside the qualified mortgage box and securitization, late this week saw the departure of three of its top executives, including CEO Bruce Witherell. According to industry officials familiar with the situation, FirstKey’s parent company, Cerberus, was beginning to take more of an active role in how the lender/issuer was being operated, a situation that didn’t sit well with some senior executives at the nonbank, including Witherell. Witherell and FirstKey executives Randy Sidhu and David Essex have accepted...
Standard & Poor’s agreed this week to a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and two state attorneys general regarding ratings on commercial MBS and non-agency MBS. Regulators suggest that further actions involving the ratings services are in the works, likely including a much larger settlement with S&P regarding activity before the financial crisis. S&P’s settlement this week involved post-2010 activity. The rating service agreed to pay the SEC and attorneys general for New York and Massachusetts more than $77 million. S&P will also take a one-year “timeout” from rating conduit/fusion commercial MBS. “They lied...
The CFPB and the Maryland AG also took action against former Wells Fargo employee Todd Cohen and his wife, Elaine Oliphant Cohen, for their alleged involvement.
A total of $185.32 billion of non-mortgage ABS were issued in 2014, the highest annual production level for the market since 2007, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. ABS issuance was up 12.0 percent from the prior year, with solid gains in three of the market’s key sectors: auto finance, credit cards and business loans. The weakest link was the student loan ABS market, where annual production fell 25.4 percent from 2013 and slipped to its lowest level since 1999. Vehicle finance deals were...[Includes two data charts]
MBA's Dave Stevens did not mince words, calling the CFPB product "the most misleading and inaccurate tool that will do anything but help prospective homebuyers.”
ABS issuance was up 12.0 percent from the prior year, with solid gains in three of the market’s key sectors: auto finance, credit cards and business loans.
Shortly before he left office, the former chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to fix a problem that may prevent some loans from being classified as qualified mortgages. Former Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, said the problem in the CFPB’s points-and-fees definition was the result of a drafting error in the Dodd-Frank Act, which established the qualified mortgage under the ability-to-repay regulation. Loans with points and fees exceeding 3 percent can still be legal under the ATR, but the lender doesn’t get the liability protection afforded QMs. “The calculation of points and fees for purposes of determining what is a qualified mortgage was not intended...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week made final two tweaks to its integrated disclosure rule that were proposed back in October, both of which will give mortgage lenders a little more flexibility. Under the first change, lenders will have to provide a revised loan estimate within three business days after a consumer locks in a floating interest rate. Under the original rule, lenders would have had to provide the revised LE on the date the rate was locked. “After hearing feedback from stakeholders, the bureau determined...
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