The CFPB last week ordered Mortgage Master Inc. and Washington Federal to pay $425,000 and $34,000, respectively, in civil penalties for allegedly violating the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which requires certain mortgage lenders to accurately collect and report data about residential mortgages. In its HMDA reviews conducted at the two companies, the bureau said it found their compliance systems were inadequate and that they had severely compromised mortgage lending data. The CFPB said Mortgage Master had significant data...

The CFPB has decided to end its controversial policy of sending enforcement attorneys to routine examinations of supervised financial institutions, effective Nov. 1, 2013. According to CFPB Deputy Director Steven Antonakes, the bureau has been sending enforcement attorneys to on-site exams for a couple years and has changed its practice after assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of the operation. “From the beginning, we intentionally grouped our supervision, enforcement and fair lending offices together because...

The CFPB is putting into place a prioritization framework, apportioning examination, investigation and fair lending resources across product types, and it may well prove to be particularly significant for nonbank entities. “A specific charge of the bureau is to attempt to level the playing field between banks and nonbank entities relative to compliance with federal consumer financial laws,” said CFPB Deputy Director Steven Antonakes in a speech before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Advisory Committee on Economic...

Consumer complaints submitted to the CFPB dropped 8.5 percent from the second quarter of 2013 to the third, the second consecutive quarterly drop, according to a new Inside the CFPB analysis of the bureau’s complaint database. The findings suggest financial services providers are getting a better handle on issues driving consumer gripes to the bureau, and doing a better job of responding to those complaints once they are lodged. Eight of the top 10 financial institutions as ranked by cumulative total of complaints saw a drop...

More than one in five loans originated today would not satisfy the criteria for the qualified mortgage “safe harbor” legal protections under the ability-to-repay rule promulgated in January by the CFPB, according to an analysis by ComplianceEase, a provider of risk management solutions to the financial services industry. The company’s analysis also found that more than half of such loans – or at least 10 percent of recently originated mortgages – have fees that exceed the new 3 percent points-and-fees threshold. Further, “Loans...

It may be hard to believe, but there are some companies considering early compliance with the CFPB’s mortgage servicing rules which take effect on Jan. 10, 2014. But one top official from the bureau urged taking a cautious approach. Answering some questions about the effective date of the bureau’s mortgage servicing rules during a webinar sponsored last week by the Mortgage Bankers Association, Marta Tanenhaus, senior counsel with the CFPB, reminded participants that “no servicer is required to comply with the rules before Jan...

Subject matter attorneys from the CFPB participated in a webinar sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association last week on the bureau’s mortgage origination rules to try to give industry representatives some detailed responses to a number of frequently asked questions the agency has received in recent months. “One of our key priorities has been to bring increased clarity, certainty and burden relief wherever possible and appropriate to address critical questions that we heard from industry,” said Lisa Applegate, the...

As the mortgage lending industry continues to brace for qualified mortgage lending versus non-QM lending, and with the new qualified residential mortgage standard about to be put into play, it’s important lenders remember they don’t have to originate QM or QRM loans. “There is no legal requirement under [Dodd-Frank] to make QM or QRM loans,” Laurence Platt, a partner with the K&L Gates law firm in Washington, DC, told participants during a recent webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated newsletter...

The Federal Reserve Office of Inspector General, which also serves as the IG for the CFPB, took the unusual step of entering a public policy debate and challenged the assertion by the Bipartisan Policy Center that it doesn’t have adequate investigative and reporting powers related to the bureau. In its recent report on the CFPB, the center and its Task Force on Consumer Protection said, “The bureau should have all of the other trademarks of accountability that independent bank regulators share. The Dodd-Frank Act contains...

The CFPB spent $13.2 million over the last two fiscal years on various, and at times controversial, data collection activities, according to documentation the bureau sent to the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee. When CFPB Director Richard Cordray appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Sept. 16, he got an earful from chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, for dozens of answers the congressman said he never got from Deputy Director Steven Antonakes related to the bureau’s data collection...