Mortgage servicers appeared to have received some protections in November when amendments to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act were signed into law. However, the rule proposed by the Federal Communications Commission to implement the amendments contravenes the law, according to one FCC commissioner. The TCPA allows for one errant call to a cell phone number that hasn’t provided consent before liabilities under the law are triggered. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 amended...
One of the biggest red flags that will bring CFPB examiners charging in a lender’s direction is the level of consumer criticisms lodged against a company, especially if the number of such gripes is disproportionately large, a top industry attorney reminded the industry recently. Addressing attendees earlier this month during a webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, a sibling publication, Michelle Rogers, a partner in the BuckleySandler law firm office in Washington, DC, said, “If your complaints are anomalous in that they’re much higher than others in your industry – peers, folks of your size – you are more likely to get an exam than others. And so you want to make sure that you’re mitigating or addressing those issues.” And those ...
There was a significant increase last year in the number of coordinated examinations of non-bank financial services companies between the CFPB and state banking regulators. The number of such exams rose from nine in 2014 to 16 in 2015, the State Coordinating Committee of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors reported recently in its annual report. Examinations that are scheduled between the SCC and the CFPB are performed simultaneously between state regulators and the CFPB. The examinations involve coordinated planning, shared resources, concurrent onsite visits, and sharing of confidential and non-confidential supervisory information, including findings and reports of exam. The SCC also indicated there was “an expansion into new industry types as the CFPB established additional supervision authority by rule.” ...
A handful of industry groups told the CFPB last week that the agency’s recent report on consumer testing of periodic statements for homeowners who have filed a bankruptcy petition is of limited usefulness without a full-fledged regulation to review at the same time. The testing itself was inadequate as well. “While we appreciate the opportunity to comment on the testing, we note that the statements have only limited meaning without their accompanying regulation,” said the Consumer Mortgage Coalition, the Credit Union National Association, and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, in conjunction with the Mortgage Servicers Working Group. They said that, in several areas, they were unable to understand what the statements reflect because they did not have an ...