Recent supervisory efforts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have focused on “sloppy” servicing transfers and other loss mitigation issues. In a “supervisory highlights” review published this week, the CFPB said that between November 2012 and June 2013, it discovered several issues with servicing transfers that can cause borrowers to miss payments, delay important processes or affect the good standing of a borrower’s mortgage. The CFPB said its examiners found noncompliance with ...
From the start of the Home Affordable Modification Program through the end of 2012, mortgages serviced for the government-sponsored enterprises accounted for the largest share of HAMP Activity. However, beginning this year, mortgages in non-agency mortgage-backed securities and loans in portfolio have overtaken GSE mortgages in terms of total HAMP activity. As of the end of the second quarter of 2013, non-agency mortgages accounted for 51.2 percent of the 1.21 million ... [Includes one data chart]
Additional mortgage servicing rulemaking and perhaps even enforcement actions from the CFPB might be inevitable, now that the bureau has issued a report detailing a number of mortgage servicing problems at banks and nonbanks. “Our examinations of banks and nonbanks allow us to correct problems before more consumers are affected,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The bureau’s new report, issued last week, “highlights both the mortgage servicing problems throughout the industry and the challenges of making sure that nonbanks are...
There are plenty of challenges associated with the CFPB’s new standards for error notices and information requests, which are part of the bureau’s new mortgage servicing standards, and policy analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers have some compliance suggestions to help companies measure up. “The new standards for error notices and information requests are expected to have a substantial impact on all mortgage servicers,” the PwC analysts said in a recent overview. “Implementing the changes will require careful review and possibly...
The CFPB may need to reach out more to consumers in areas that face the highest risk of foreclosure, and intensify pressure on lenders that serve older Americans, according to a new analysis of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database by a handful of faculty members at the Yale University School of Law. Analyzing a new data set of 110,000 consumer complaints lodged with the bureau, they found that Bank of America, Citibank and PNC Bank were “significantly less timely in responding to consumer complaints than the average financial...
CFPB examiners found numerous loss mitigation mistakes, including inconsistent communications with borrowers, spotty loss mitigation underwriting and long application review periods. All this could lead to new regulations for servicers.
Parties to trustee lawsuits challenging a city’s use of eminent domain to deal with foreclosures are gearing up for a face-off at an injunction hearing Sept. 13 in federal district court in San Francisco. The city of Richmond, CA, the defendant in the lawsuit, has suffered setbacks in the last few days and has yet to make good on its threat to initiate eminent domain proceedings after investor trustees rejected its offer to purchase distressed mortgages for restructuring. Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, acting as trustees for a group of ...
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is asking the Department of Justice to explain why it failed to get “adequate” compensation from major mortgage servicers for fraud committed against the FHA. In an Aug. 21 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Warren raised concerns about the $225 million paid by five servicers last year to obtain releases from False Claims Act liability stemming from fraudulent mortgage insurance claims the servicers submitted to FHA and other agencies from 2008 to 2010. The FHA’s woeful financial condition led to legislative reform efforts, including the ...
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