The House Financial Services Committee this week approved legislation that would allow the White House to fire the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency at will and allow Congress to set the agency’s annual budget. Those provisions are included in the CHOICE Act, a Republican bill that would make sweeping changes to the Dodd-Frank Act. While the legislation is expected eventually to be cleared by the full House on a partisan vote, its fate in the Senate is murkier. FHFA Director Mel Watt’s term as chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ends...

The House Financial Services Committee this week began marking up the Republican majority’s alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act, H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, introduced late last month by committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. As previously reported, the bill would make numerous changes to the mortgage lending regulatory landscape, and eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rulemaking, supervisory and enforcement authority, among other significant changes. As Inside Mortgage Finance went to press, lawmakers of both parties were squabbling...

Congress should consider comprehensive reform in six areas to improve the solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program and improve resilience to flooding, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The report comes in the wake of bipartisan legislation introduced last week in the Senate to reauthorize the NFIP and to broaden participation of private insurance in the flood insurance market. The program’s current authorization will expire in September this year. The GAO recommended...

Secondary market participants would see a host of changes across the regulatory landscape under a detailed discussion draft of an overhaul to the Dodd-Frank Act that began circulating late last week from the office of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. The Financial CHOICE Act, resurrected from the 114th Congress and revised in a number of key areas, would eliminate the Dodd-Frank risk-retention requirements for ABS other than residential mortgages. Elsewhere, wording in the bill has been included...

As Congress considers changes to the Dodd-Frank Act and other regulatory reforms, the Structured Finance Industry Group weighed in with a white paper detailing various regulatory reforms sought by participants in the MBS and ABS markets. One of the top priorities for the trade group is the so-called Regulation AB2, which sets loan-level disclosure requirements for securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission set...

With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set to lose their capital buffers in eight short months, industry trade groups, think tanks and policy wonks are churning out reform blueprints at warp speed these days even though Congress likely won’t act until sometime next year, if then. Last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association floated its plan to reconstitute the two government-sponsored enterprises – followed by several critiques, not all of them kind – and this week the Independent Community Bankers of America published its proposal. Both plans throw...

As of press time, Congress passed a one-week stopgap spending measure to keep the government open through May 5, averting a looming government shutdown. The House passed H.J. Res. 99 by a vote of 373 to 30. The continuing resolution has been sent to President Trump. The continuing resolution provides lawmakers sufficient time to negotiate an omnibus spending bill. The previous spending bill was scheduled to expire at midnight, April 28, which would have resulted in a government shutdown similar to the one that paralyzed the federal government in 2013. A shutdown can cause grief for sellers and homebuyers and severely delay processing of mortgage loans if lenders cannot verify a borrower’s tax data or Social Security number. This time, however, the FHA and VA are prepared for such an eventuality, said industry observers. A 16-day government shutdown in October 2013 sent millions of ...

President Trump Friday morning signaled his intent to nominate former regulator Pamela Patenaude to be the next deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to a bio listed on the White House website, Patenaude is president of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families. She also served as HUD assistant secretary for community, planning and development during the George W. Bush administration. Patenaude’ s nomination had been expected for some time. She is expected to play a key role in shaping housing policy in the new administration and brings to the table a depth of knowledge about the industry. HUD Secretary Ben Carson was a career brain surgeon with little in the way of housing and mortgage experience. Meanwhile, industry lobbyists contend the White House continues to vet candidates for two other ...

Late last week, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, released a detailed discussion draft of a revised version of his Financial CHOICE Act that would eviscerate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and make a number of other changes to the Dodd-Frank Act and a host of its mortgage-related regulations. Title VII of the draft, recently dubbed CHOICE Act 2.0, would dismantle the parts of the CFPB that the lending industry and other critics have found to be most problematic: its rulemaking, supervisory and enforcement authority, including unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices. The previous version of the bill would have retained...

Ocwen Financial – its financial future hanging in the balance – this week filed court documents challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which late last week brought civil charges against the $200 billion servicer. Ocwen is hardly new to regulatory scrutiny, but this time around the situation is different. Just when it thought it had cleaned up its act on servicing residential borrowers, it was sued by the CFPB and smacked with cease-and-desist orders from at least 24 states. Those orders – which the company is already challenging in court – prevent...