Specialty servicers Ocwen and Ditech Financial ranked third and fifth, respectively, in mortgage complaints during the first six months of 2017, according to Inside the CFPB.
Trade organizations representing the mortgage banking industry provided a number of important suggestions for the CFPB as it proceeds with a Dodd-Frank Act requirement to assess its mortgage servicing rules at the five-year mark. The first issue the American Bankers Association raised in this regard in its comment letter to the bureau was the scope of the assessment. “The CFPB should incorporate all of the servicing rules into its review, including the rules that implement the Truth and Lending Act and the amendments that the CFPB adopted to the servicing rules in 2016,” the ABA said – not just the rules promulgated under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The bureau also should take into account the rules’ effects upon consumers...
JPMorgan Chase told the CFPB it supports the bureau’s mission of protecting consumers and recognizes that regulatory guardrails are necessary to make sure mortgage servicers adequately address consumers’ needs. “However, certain provisions of Regulation X [which implements the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act] impose burdens on servicers that increase servicing costs and impact access to consumer credit without providing proportional benefits to consumers,” the servicer said. JPMorgan was one of the industry participants commenting on the CFPB’s proposal to start assessing the effectiveness of its mortgage servicing rules under RESPA. The financial institution went on to some of the problem areas in Reg X that still need to be addressed, one of which has to do with rules for loss...
Based on plunging consumer gripes sent to the CFPB, the mortgage market looks like it’s in great shape – with one glaring exception: mortgage servicing. According to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB of second quarter data from the bureau’s consumer complaint database, mortgage servicing saw a 17.5 percent jump in borrower grousing during the second quarter, but a milder 1.4 percent uptick from the first half of 2016. That latter level would be barely perceptible were it not in such stark contrast to the double-digit drop-offs seen in all other mortgage-related areas tracked by this publication. For instance, kvetching about loan modifications plummeted 81.5 percent from the first quarter of this year to the second, and [With exclusive data charts]...
Walter, the parent of Ditech Financial, said it expects to “acknowledge receipt” of the compliance violation and “notify the NYSE of its intention to seek to cure the deficiency…”
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, although late to the game, is proposing new capital requirements for the Federal Home Loan Banks to comply with the Dodd-Frank Act. Other regulators have already implemented the Dodd-Frank Act provisions that shift capital requirements away from ratings. This proposed rule would carry over most of the existing regulation without any major change, but it would revise the credit risk component of the risk-based capital requirement, along with limitations on extensions of unsecured credit. Currently banks calculate credit risk capital charges and unsecured credit limits based on ratings issued by a nationally recognized statistical rating organization. But the proposed rule would require the banks to use their own internal rating methodology.
JPM reported mortgage banking income of $1.43 billion in the second quarter, off $103 million from the first quarter and down $495 million compared to 2Q16.
According to Fairholme’s math, the GSEs earn over $15 billion a year, and taxpayers own 80 percent of the companies (via the senior preferred). Berkowitz values the senior stock at $100 billion…
The national average credit score tracked by Fair Isaac (FICO) recently reached a record high in April: 700. And the share of consumers seeking new credit is actually declining, according to an analysis by FICO. Ethan Dornhelm, a senior principal scientist in the analytic development group at FICO, noted that the average FICO score as of April was 10 points higher than the reading in October 2006, before the financial crisis. Average scores fell to 686 in October 2009 and have ...