Smith said his team has reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed at least nine Ocwen executives...

With Greece ready to crack up, it was thought that mortgage rates might plunge. But it hasn't happened yet...

According to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, at March 31, RoundPoint serviced $46.88 billion in home mortgages.

According to the RHS, the Internal Revenue Service action is meant to deter any fraud that might result from identity theft.

CFPB is Investigating Bankrate. Bankrate revealed recently that the CFPB has issued civil investigative demands to the company and certain employees in an effort to seek documents and answer questions relating to Bankrate’s quality control process for its online mortgage interest rate tables. The company has cooperated in responding to the CIDs, Bankrate said in a Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “The company received a communication from the CFPB inviting the company to respond to the CFPB’s identified issues in the form of a notice of opportunity to respond and advise during which the CFPB identified potential claims it might bring against the company,” the filing said. Bankrate said it has submitted a response that it ...

DocMagic Says It Will be Ready for TRID, Delay or No Delay. Industry vendor DocMagic, Inc., based in Torrance, CA, announced recently that the CFPB’s proposed delay in implementing the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule will have no bearing on its plans to be ready to meet the bureau’s originally planned Aug. 1 due date. “The CFPB only stated that they will be issuing a ‘proposed amendment’ to delay the rule to Oct. 1, which means it could possibly finalize a shorter time period,” said Rich Horn, TRID legal advisor to DocMagic and former senior counsel and special advisor at the CFPB. Horn led the production of the 1,888 page final TRID rule and the design and consumer testing of ...

Regulators such as the CFPB are still paying attention to fair lending issues these days, but their focal point is shifting more towards greater emphasis on access to credit. “What we’re seeing is a pendulum swing from the focus of concerns being loan pricing, to the focus of concerns being loan access,” said Jeffrey Naimon, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the BuckleySandler law firm, during a webinar last week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated publication. Many wonder why it appears that access to credit remains so tight, seven years after the last financial crisis. Naimon said the CFPB ability-to-repay rule’s qualified mortgage standard could be one of the reasons. “Basically, lenders only want to make ...

The CFPB’s latest supervisory report finds illegal mortgage servicing practices are still continuing in at least corners of the marketplace. According to the report, the bureau’s examiners found at least one servicer that sent notices of intent to foreclose to borrowers already approved for trial modifications. “This dual-tracking could mislead consumers to believe the servicer had abandoned the trial modification,” the CFPB said. Bureau examiners also found at least one servicer that, because of a system error, sent notices to borrowers who were current on their loans, saying that foreclosure would be imminent. There are also still problems with illegal runarounds with loss mitigation applications, according to the report. For example, examiners found at least one servicer requesting additional documents ...

Here’s a fair lending regulatory compliance tip from the American Bankers Association’s 2015 regulatory compliance conference in Washington, DC: If you are advertising or marketing mortgage products in Spanish, you would be well advised to provide all requisite disclosures and servicing in Spanish. “As you think about how to reach people, advertising and marketing in Spanish is a good way to get to Spanish-speaking population,” said Andrew Sandler, chairman and executive partner at the BuckleySandler law firm, during a breakout session on fair lending. “But one thing regulators are intent on is, if you’re selling me in my language, then you need to be servicing me in my language too. So lenders should be careful to think about that,” the ...

The CFPB last week formally proposed amending its integrated mortgage disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act – the so-called TRID – to move the rule’s effective date to October 3, 2015, which would give the industry a two-month delay. Although the TILA-RESPA final rule was published on December 31, 2013, and received widespread public and Congressional attention, the bureau said it “recently discovered that it inadvertently had not submitted the rule report to Congress as required.” The bureau’s oversight came despite having 18 months to anticipate and plan for the submission. “Immediately upon discovering its error, the bureau submitted the rule report to both Houses of Congress and the Government Accountability Office on ...