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 ...
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 ...
(*)Hatteras Financial agreed this week to acquire Pingora Asset Management and Pingora Loan Servicing. Hatteras said the acquisition will help the real estate investment trust acquire mortgage servicing rights, including MSRs on the REIT’s jumbo adjustable-rate mortgage flow business ...
Pete Mills, SVP for residential policy at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said there are a few issues not covered by the bureau’s delay. “What about state regulators?" he asked. "Are they going to be bound, are they under that same understanding as the bureau?”
After just over a year of buying mortgages that don’t meet the qualified-mortgage test, Jeff Lemieux has departed Bayview Asset Management while signaling that a non-QM securitization likely won’t happen any time soon – or even this year. Lemieux, who headed correspondent purchases for Bayview, provided Inside MBS & ABS with a blunt assessment of both non-QM originations and securitizations: “Nothing’s happening.” Lemieux went...
Barclays PLC, Britain’s second-largest bank, is exiting the non-agency MBS market due to growing regulatory pressure in its home country to maintain a capital cushion against the riskier, lower-grade mortgage assets, according to Bloomberg. The move appears to be part of Barclays’ “Project Transform,” a group-wide reorganization plan announced last year, which aims to make sweeping changes to the financial institution’s business model to ensure long-term profitability. Specifically, the plan seeks to reduce Barclays’ investment banking activities as it shifts focus from securities trading to mortgage originations. Resolving legacy conduct issues is...