The mortgage industry has about a month left to officially weigh in on the CFPB’s pending Home Mortgage Disclosure Act proposed rule, and a top official at the bureau urged lenders to raise important issues now. “Because we’re opening HMDA up, we’re taking the opportunity to try to streamline the reporting process for you,” said Kathleen Ryan, deputy assistant director in the CFPB’s Office of Regulations, in comments before the Mortgage Bankers Association’s regulatory compliance conference on Monday. The bureau also is looking “for ways to ease some of the pain around geocoding and these other ‘translation’ issues that you have in your reporting systems by trying to align to the extent possible” with existing industry standards for data points ...
State-licensed mortgage companies – and the agencies that oversee them – are on the verge of receiving the same kind of protections against waivers of privilege for information provided to the CFPB that was previously extended to depository mortgage lenders supervised by federal agencies. Before adjourning for the November elections, the U.S. Senate passed H.R. 5062, the Examination and Supervisory Privilege Parity Act of 2014. The bill would require the CFPB to coordinate its supervisory activities with state agencies that license, supervise or examine those non-depositories that offer consumer financial products or services. It also would provide that when someone shares information with those same state regulators, or with prudential regulators and state banking regulators, that sharing does not waive attorney-client privileges. ...
Before members of Congress left the nation’s capital for their final push before the November elections, diverse efforts were underway for making changes to aspects of the qualified mortgage definition under the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule, either through legislation or persuasion. Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 5461, a package of legislation which includes the text of H.R. 3211, the Mortgage Choice Act, which passed the House unanimously in June. The legislation would make it easier for mortgages to fit under the ATR rule’s cap on points and fees by providing equal treatment to title charges, regardless of whether or not a consumer chooses a title company affiliated with the lender. “This provision is narrowly focused to ...
Most of the mortgage finance trade associations wrote to the CFPB recently with a handful of suggestions to improve implementation of the bureau’s TRID – the pending Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosure rule. At the top of the list: more written guidance, please.“We appreciate the bureau offering oral guidance through webinars and other channels,” said the groups in a joint letter. However, due to the complexity of the rule, “we strongly recommend that the bureau also provide reliable, written guidance on issues.” Such input is “essential for lenders, settlement service providers, insurers, investors and other secondary market entities, regulators and ultimately, consumers themselves.” The groups also encouraged the CFPB to deepen its engagement in industry ...
Representatives of some of the leading lenders of non-qualified mortgages are optimistic about the prospects for the future of the space, seeing opportunity where many see only risk. Brian Simon, chief operating officer for New Penn Financial, answered the question: Why open a non-QM market? “I think, as everyone is aware, the current credit environment has shut out many potential homeowners,” he said during a webinar last week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated newsletter. “There’s a narrow credit box in the current mortgage market, which means that the people who were hardest hit in the housing crisis have little access to credit.” New Penn Financial has decided to market products that allow access to affordable credit. “That just ...
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