The CFPB has responded to a variety of mortgage appraisal issues on two different fronts, publishing a final rule all its own in conjunction with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and participating in an interagency rulemaking in the context of the Truth in Lending Act. On the ECOA front, the bureau issued a final rule that requires mortgage lenders to provide applicants with free copies of all appraisals and other home-value estimates, although a lender generally may still charge the consumer a reasonable fee for the cost of conducting the appraisal or other estimate. In essence, then, a lender can charge...
The CFPB’s new qualified mortgage rules will frustrate the market and adversely impact traditional supply and demand principles that could slow the sector’s recovery, according to scholars at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC. “Neither consumers nor creditors emerge as winners,” write research fellows Diane Katz and David John in an issue brief on the new QM rules, issued earlier this month. Irresponsible lending did in fact play...
The CFPB has granted a request from financial institutions for extra time to prepare for the agency’s pending international remittance transfer final rule, but it may not be enough to satisfy them. Earlier this month, the bureau temporarily postponed the Feb. 7, 2013, effective date of its remittance transfer rule pending finalization of its December 2012 proposal to make changes in three narrow areas. First, the proposal would provide more flexibility when it comes to the disclosure of foreign taxes, as well as fees imposed by a designated recipient’s institution for receiving a remittance transfer in an account. Second, the proposal would limit...
CFPB, Agencies Eyeing Social Media Contacts for Consumer Protection. The CFPB and the other five agencies that comprise the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council are proposing supervisory guidance on federal consumer protection and compliance requirements as they apply to social media used by banks, savings associations and credit unions, as well as by nonbank entities. “Upon completion of the guidance, and after consideration of comments received from the public, the federal financial institution regulatory agencies will issue it as supervisory guidance to the institutions that they supervise and the State Liaison Committee of the FFIEC will encourage state regulators to adopt the guidance,” the proposal stated. “Accordingly, institutions will be expected to use the guidance in their efforts to ensure that their policies and procedures provide oversight and controls commensurate with the risks posed by their social media activities.” Bureau Considers Helping Americans with Retirement Savings. The CFPB is contemplating whether to get involved in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, Bloomberg News reported recently. “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring and are interested in, in terms of whether and what authority we have,” Director Richard Cordray said in an interview with the news organization. CFPB Proposes...
Merrill Lynch is in the market actively buying jumbo mortgages and is also looking for an executive to manage its correspondent purchases, secondary market officials told Inside Mortgage Finance.
Carrington Holding Co., which has a growing presence in residential finance, has hired Wall Street veteran Christopher Whalen as Executive Vice President in charge of its investment banking operation.
Some top legal minds expect to see more investigations, and perhaps settlements, brought by the Residential MBS Working Group in the months ahead, and they’ll likely be flavored by interagency turf wars and the political ambitions of the elected officials that are helping to steer the group’s actions. “Just on the basis of prosecutorial rivalry, you can expect there will be further activity in this area,” said Jeremiah Buckley, partner in the BuckleySandler law firm, during a webinar discussion this week on the working group’s activities. Andrew Schilling, former chief of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York...
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