Over the past 18 months or so, the DOJ has expanded FCA use to reverse mortgages and loan servicing, according to attorneys Phil Schulman and Kristie Kully…
A group of servicers and other industry participants is focusing on issues with government-insured mortgages and has plans to simplify servicing practices. The Mortgage Servicing Collaborative was organized by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. It includes representatives from a number of major servicers along with some officials from trade groups, consumer groups, investors, mortgage insurers, vendors and academics. The goal is...
The Conference of State Bank Supervisors has called for granting community banks relief from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule as well as the reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Testifying before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee last week, Charles Cooper, commissioner of the Texas Banking Department and immediate past chairman of CSBS, said the rules limit the ability of smaller financial institutions to engage in residential lending. “Smaller and less complex institutions have reported...
The Mortgage Bankers Association recently submitted a brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in a pending case regarding class-action waivers and arbitration clauses in employment agreements. The MBA and eight state-affiliated MBAs argued that class action waivers are critical for smaller employers such as independent mortgage companies. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis as part of its term that begins in October. Epic Systems, a health care software company, required certain groups of employees to agree to bring any wage-and-hour claims against the company only through individual arbitration. Circuit courts have issued...
The House Financial Services Committee may take up housing-finance reform after Congress returns from its August recess, according to a key GOP member of the panel. But Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, who chairs the subcommittee on financial services and consumer credit, told a recent meeting of the Financial Services Roundtable that he doesn’t expect any real movement on housing reform this year. “I wouldn’t expect...
The U.S. House of Representatives was a relatively busy place last week, with a handful of measures related to flood insurance passing the House Financial Services Committee, and a few other, small-scale, individual mortgage reforms being introduced. Among the bills passed by the committee was H.R. 2875, the “National Flood Insurance Program Administrative Reform Act of 2017,” introduced by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-NY. It would make certain administrative reforms to the NFIP to increase fairness and accuracy and to protect the taxpayer from program fraud and abuse. The legislation passed on a 58-0 vote. Also favorably voted on was...
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