The House Financial Services Committee this week was advancing more than a dozen and a half regulatory relief measures as Inside Mortgage Finance was going to press, including some mortgage-related legislation that would expand the qualified-mortgage box for smaller entities and exempt many institutions from the rules and regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been charged with exploring options to update their current FICO credit scoring model and make a decision this year as to whether to make the switch in 2019.
The game-changing ability-to-repay mortgage lending rule from the Consumer Financial Protec-tion Bureau took effect four years ago this month. At that time, regulators said there would be plenty of mortgage lending outside the parameters of the qualified-mortgage box. So far, however, that ex-pectation has yet to be realized.
Bipartisan legislation was introduced last week in the U.S. Senate to protect veterans and service members from predatory serial refinancing by requiring lenders to show the transaction actually bene-fits the borrower.
The Federal Reserve Board last week wrapped up enforcement actions against 10 banks and im-posed fines against five of them after “sustainable improvements” in their servicing operations.
According to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, BofA ranked sixth among first lien lenders in the third quarter, but U.S. Bank isn’t too far behind in the number seven spot.
The Trump White House was slated to nominate mortgage banker David Kittle to head the agency but back in November he grew tired of waiting and withdrew his name from consideration.
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