House Financial Services Committee Passes Flood Insurance Bill. The House Financial Services Committee recently voted to advance legislation that would provide a private flood insurance alternative to the federal National Flood Insurance Program for homeowners required to purchase flood insurance. H.R. 2901, the Flood Insurance Market Parity and Modernization Act, passed by a unanimous vote of 53-0 and was sent to the House floor for consideration. A Senate counterpart bill, S. 1679, which was reintroduced by Sen. Dean Heller, R-NV, last year, is awaiting action in the Committee of Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Both bills were introduced jointly in both the House and the Senate in 2015. Currently, due to uncertainty as to whether the coverage satisfies federal requirements, many lenders are reluctant to issue mortgages for homes with ...

Republican members of the House and the Senate have introduced legislation that would nullify the Department of Labor’s much-anticipated white-collar overtime exemption rule now under review at the Office of Management and Budget. Introduced jointly by GOP members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the bill would stop the DOL’s proposed expansion of mandatory federal overtime pay in its tracks. The bill, Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act, would provide...

The House Financial Services Committee recently voted to advance legislation that would provide a private flood insurance alternative to the federal National Flood Insurance Program for homeowners required to purchase flood insurance. H.R. 2901, the Flood Insurance Market Parity and Modernization Act, passed by a unanimous vote of 53-0 and was sent to the House floor for consideration. A Senate counterpart bill, S. 1679, which was reintroduced by Sen. Dean Heller, R-NV, last year, is awaiting action in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Both bills were introduced...

Full Senate to cosponsor a bipartisan bill that aims to make sure guaranty fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not be used for other purposes. Legislation, S.752, was introduced by Sens. Bob Crapo, R-ID and Mark Warner, D-VA, in March 2015, to establish a scorekeeping rule so g-fee increases aren’t going toward offsetting spending that increases the deficit. Tom Salomone, president of the NAR, said any time g-fees are extended, increased and diverted for unrelated spending, homeowners are charged more for their mortgage and taxpayers are exposed to additional long-term risk. He emphasized that the purpose of g-fee revenue is to guard against GSE credit losses and should only be used to protect taxpayers from mortgage losses.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week unveiled final loan-level and lender-level certifications aimed at easing lender anxiety over potential enforcement actions due to minor errors, but a statement from the Justice Department could put a damper on the new FHA policy. The updated version of FHA’s loan-level certification clarifies that lenders will be held accountable for mistakes that would have prompted a lender to change its decision to approve a loan, not for minor errors. In addition, HUD opened a 30-day comment period for lender-level certification to address stakeholders’ concerns that proposed changes to loan-level certification could weaken the department’s enforcement authority. Lender liability under the federal False Claims Act has been...

Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee are working on a regulatory relief bill as an alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act, many of the regulatory provisions of which have yet to be promulgated more than five years after enactment. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the committee, made the announcement and revealed some of the details earlier this week during a government relations event sponsored by the American Bankers Association in Washington, DC. “I can report...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not changed its “corrective and diagnostic” supervisory and enforcement approach towards the industry’s implementation of the integrated disclosure rule known as TRID, and does not expect to bring any enforcement action any time soon unless there is blatant misconduct, CFPB Director Richard Cordray told members of Congress this week. Whether mortgage lenders get any additional, official clarification or guidance from the agency to help with their compliance and litigation concerns is another matter. During a hearing Wednesday of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, engaged...

The House Financial Services Committee this week passed the “SAFE Transitional Licensing Act,” H.R. 2121, which creates a 120-day grace period to let licensed mortgage originators continue originating loans after they leave a federally-insured institution and go to work for a nonbank. The bill was introduced by Rep. Steve Stivers, R-OH, in April 2015 to amend the 2008 Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act. It would give loan originators who work for depository institutions and do not have to be licensed time to meet the licensing requirements that nonbank LOs have. Currently, bank LOs are registered...

The list of reasons to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is growing and taxpayer risk is increasing the longer the current housing finance system lingers in uncertainty, according to speakers at a Capitol Hill briefing on government-sponsored enterprise reform sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Fowler Williams, president and CEO of Crescent Mortgage, said that without the secondary mortgage market outlet, smaller institutions like his would not be able to make 30-year fixed-rate mortgages available in rural and small towns. Ethan Handelman, vice president for policy and advocacy at the National Housing Conference, said...

A handful of recent and current U.S., European and international regulatory efforts “pose a serious threat to securitization as a critical source of funding for the real economy,” especially when taken together, a top securitization official told lawmakers in Washington, DC, this week. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, Richard Johns, executive director of the Structured Finance Industry Group, took on a handful of the industry’s most problematic regulatory initiatives. Among them were the liquidity ratio rules that U.S. regulators implemented in late 2014, and the new Basel III capital rules that were adopted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He also addressed...