The settlement offer – which does not cover claims on trusts issued by Washington Mutual – will remain open until Jan. 15, 2014, but may be extended.

One lender that operates in the Irvine area noted that his firm has received several resumes from former Rushmore workers.

Under the new guidance, lenders must report to FHA all findings of fraud and material misrepresentations concerning the origination, underwriting or servicing of a loan that the lender is unable to mitigate or resolve.

In a new letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, the ICBA and 41 state affiliates say they want a “reasonable transition period of nine to 12 months."

Mortgage professionals who work the M&A trade contend that interest in residential finance is not waning in the least, but potential buyers are being a bit more choosey these days.

Republicans on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee appear to have thrown in the towel on trying to slow down the CFPB’s mortgage rulemaking locomotive. During a hearing last week, ostensibly to receive the bureau’s fourth semi-annual report to Congress, committee members from the Grand Old Party repeatedly tried to hammer CFPB Director Richard Cordray over the agency’s data-collection practices, with only a few brief mentions in passing of the bureau’s game-changing ability-to-repay rule with its...

Republic Mortgage Insurance Corp. – which hopes to re-enter the MI space sometime in the next year – on Friday agreed to a $100,000 settlement with the CFPB, settling allegations that it paid illegal kickbacks to lenders for at least 10 years. In a statement, the CFPB said RMIC “provided kickbacks to mortgage lenders by purchasing captive reinsurance that was essentially worthless but was designed to make a profit for the lenders. The kickbacks were in exchange for referrals of private mortgage insurance business from the lenders.”...

In a sign of just how serious the CFPB is about steering and loan-compensation issues, the bureau last week pressed Castle & Cooke Mortgage LLC into a settlement involving $9 million in restitution and $4 million in civil penalties to resolve allegations the firm and two of its executives paid illegal bonuses for steering consumers into costlier mortgages. The CFPB alleged that Castle & Cooke, through actions taken by its president, Matthew Pineda, and senior vice-president of capital markets, Buck Hawkins, violated the...

The CFPB’s much-anticipated integrated mortgage disclosure final rule and related forms could be issued as early as Wednesday, Nov. 20, when the bureau plans to conduct a public field hearing in Boston on the mortgage aspect of its broader “know before you owe” initiative. The event will feature remarks by CFPB Director Richard Cordray and testimony from consumer groups, industry representatives and members of the public. The purpose of the forthcoming rule and forms is to integrate and harmonize the mortgage disclosures consumers receive...

The CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule and qualified mortgage standard will have wide-reaching implications for both the primary and secondary U.S. mortgage markets, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings. The ATR rule, which goes into effect Jan. 10, 2014, was drafted to protect borrowers by ensuring that lenders have adequately assessed a borrower’s ability to repay a residential mortgage loan. As a result, “creditors will need to adjust underwriting practices to conform to new QM guidelines and new practices will need to be created and...