The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week approved Laura Wertheimer to be inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, moving her nomination forward for full Senate consideration. Werthheimer, a Washington, DC, securities lawyer in private practice, would replace Steve Linick, who resigned last summer to serve as the State Department’s IG. During her nomination hearing before the committee last week, Wertheimer pledged to exercise her duties “aggressively and independently.

The presidents of all 12 Federal Home Loan Banks are in talks with the Federal Housing Finance Agency over a newly issued moratorium on nonbank mortgage firms – mostly mortgage real estate investment trusts – gaining access to the system’s borrowing window through a captive insurance affiliate. The 90-day moratorium was voluntarily put in place by the FHLB presidents on June 12, said a spokesman for the Council of Federal Home Loan Banks, a trade group of sorts for the 12 regional government-sponsored enterprises.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week announced it reached a nearly $100 million settlement with RBS Securities to settle allegations tied to non-agency MBS bought by Freddie Mac from 2005 to 2007, but the deal represents just a fraction of the firm’s remaining exposure. The $99.5 million settlement only resolves claims against RBS in FHFA v. Ally Financial Inc. in the Southern District of New York. Ally Financial is the successor company to GMAC-RFC, a now defunct non-agency MBS issuer.

A new audit released this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s official watchdog found that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered $158 million of “financial harm” due to excessively priced lender-placed or “force-placed” insurance policies in 2012 alone. The FHFA-OIG audit notes that several state financial regulators found that the LPI rates in their states were excessive. The excessive costs were driven up by “profit-sharing arrangements under which servicers were paid to steer business to LPI providers. Such arrangements often took the form of commission structures and reinsurance deals,” according to the OIG.

Secondary market mortgage sales – the lifeblood of mortgage banking income – declined sharply during the first quarter of 2014, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call reports. Commercial banks and savings institutions sold just $125.7 billion in single-family home loans through their mortgage banking operations during the first three months of this year. That was down 31.1 percent from the fourth quarter and marked the slowest ... [Includes one data chart]

A spike in mortgage interest rates similar to what occurred in 2013 is possible, according to economists at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The May-June 2013 spike caught many lenders off guard and put a crimp in mortgage banking profitability. The direction mortgage interest rates are likely to head is heavily tied to the anticipations of market participants, according to Saty Patrabansh, a senior economist at the FHFA, along with William Doerner and Samuel Asin ...

The Treasury Department announced this week that the Home Affordable Modification Program and related initiatives will be extended again, this time until at least the end of 2016. HAMP activity has declined fairly steadily since 2010 but received a boost recently due to changes by the FHA. “We need to be there for homeowners facing foreclosure, those who are struggling with increasing interest rates on their modified mortgages and those whose homes are ...

Diversity and inclusion are no longer just a compliance issue, a window dressing or a matter of being “politically correct” but a corporate tool for achieving profits, attracting and developing new talent, and an appropriate response to an increasingly diverse marketplace, according to experts at an industry summit held in Washington, DC, this week. The three-day summit was organized by the Mortgage Bankers Association’s diversity and inclusion committee to ...

Bayview Asset Management of Coral Gables, FL, is entering the mortgage origination business at a precarious time: Funding volumes this year could fall to just $1 trillion, one of the worst showings since the turn of the century. But that hasn’t deterred the privately-held company, whose investors include the well regarded BlackRock Financial. Since launching a correspondent purchase program a few months ago, Bayview has reviewed roughly $500 million in collateral, purchasing ...

There’s no one-size-fits-all compliance solution for mortgage lending institutions these days, regardless of their size. But some top compliance professionals recently offered a variety of principles and guidelines to help compliance officers build the best framework possible for their banks. Speaking at the American Bankers Association’s regulatory compliance conference in New Orleans this month, Lyn Farrell, managing director at Treliant Risk Advisors ...