An appeals court ruled in favor of mortgage underwriters last week in a dispute regarding overtime eligibility. The issue could be taken up by the Supreme Court of the U.S. as the ruling furthered a split among lower courts on the issue. Mortgage underwriters from Provident Savings Bank filed a lawsuit in 2012 against the bank after the employer said they qualified for the Fair Labor Standards Act’s administrative exemption to overtime payments. A district court ruled in favor of the bank in 2015 in the case of McKeen-Chaplin v. Provident Savings Bank. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned...

Scams aimed at stealing homebuyers’ closing funds persist, according to a warning last week from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The warning follows similar notices in recent years from the Federal Trade Commission. “The scammers attempt to steal the homebuyer’s closing funds – for example, their downpayment and closing costs – by sending the homebuyer an email posing as the homebuyer’s real estate agent or settlement agent (title company, escrow officer or attorney),” according to Davida Farrar, counsel in the CFPB’s consumer education and engagement division. In a post on the CFPB’s website, Farrar said...

RBS will pay approximately $4.53 billion to Freddie and approximately $975 million to Fannie.

Jumbos accounted for 5.6 percent of Flagstar’s residential originations during the period…

The big question: Will the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee support an explicit government guarantee on conventional MBS?

FHFA’s status as an independent agency headed by a single director makes it different from almost every other independent agency…

However, Congress has already prohibited arbitration agreements in the largest market the agency oversees: residential mortgages.

There's a race on to see who will be the first to deliver a best-in-class lending automation product that the consumer trusts, said consultant Paul Hindman...

As IMFnews went to press, Seckel was said to be in a meeting and could not be reached for comment.

Overtime pay for underwriters will remain a focus of litigation because courts are split on the issue, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.