Partly to comply with liquidity cover ratio requirements imposed in the wake of the financial crisis, U.S. banks ramped up their holdings of high-quality liquid assets. But once they got compliant, many of them shifted their asset allocations more to agency MBS and U.S. Treasuries, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve. This could have implications for the U.S. central bank’s massive balance sheet over the long haul, they added. As of Jan. 1, 2015, large banks in the U.S. have needed...
A former employee of Standard & Poor’s Rating Services beat fraud charges alleging she loosened S&P’s rating methodology for commercial MBS to generate business for her employer. However, she was found liable of the lesser charge of negligence for failing to disclose the change. In his initial Aug. 29 decision, Administrative Law Judge James Grimes of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative court said that while Barbara Duka did change the firm’s rating methodology for CMBS, he found no evidence that she intended to manipulate, deceive or defraud investors. Rather, Duka, manager of S&P’s CMBS rating group, did...
Independent mortgage bankers are leading all other lenders in providing mortgage loans to first-time homebuyers, minorities, lower-income borrowers and rural areas, and yet they are more regulated than banks, according to a new industry report. The report from the Community Home Lenders Association underscores the fact that IMBs are small businesses that don’t have access to federally insured deposits. It claims that IMBs have done a better job of servicing home loans ...
PHH Corp. and Realogy Holdings Corp. and some of their subsidiaries and affiliates recently agreed to a $17 million settlement to bring to an end a putative class-action lawsuit over allegedly deceptive and collusive practices in violation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. At issue were allegations of arranging kickbacks for unlawful referrals of title services. The plaintiffs in the case alleged...
Although the National Credit Union Administration and a top CU trade group favor allowing credit unions to buy mortgage servicing rights in the secondary market, don’t look for these “nonprofit” depositories to become significant players anytime soon. At least that’s the opinion of a handful of investment bankers and others who ply their trade in the MSR market. For starters, CUs are not...
A proposal by federal regulators to delay tougher capital requirements for mortgage servicing assets will have a “marginally positive impact” on banks subject to the proposal, according to banking regulators. Near the end of August, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued a proposed rule that would extend the current treatment on mortgage servicing rights and related assets, delaying tougher standards established by Basel III. The proposal would apply to banks that aren’t subject to the “advanced approaches” capital rules – generally banks with less than $250 billion in total assets. “For small banking organizations that have significant amounts of MSAs ... the proposal could...
Lenders and servicers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages notched a big win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which found that a federal bar on foreclosure on government-sponsored enterprise loans preempted Nevada’s superiority lien law. As a published decision, the court’s ruling in Berezovsky v. Moniz resolves the dispute in favor of the federal foreclosure bar, according to Marc James Ayers and R. Aaron Chastain, attorneys with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings. It serves as a binding precedent in the Ninth Circuit and should guide other circuits in deciding cases involving homeowners associations’ super-priority liens, they said. In Berezovsky, the panel affirmed...
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