Bank pricing strategies are more about responding to new product regulations, fee income and capital and liquidity standards rather than to their consumers’ view of value, according to a new Deloitte report on retail-bank pricing. The report, which attempts to make the case for value-based pricing, contends that bank pricing tactics focus primarily on costs and risks rather than on how consumers perceive and receive value. It’s...

The traditional interpretation of Section 8 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act that the mortgage industry has relied on for decades was vindicated this week when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with most of the arguments advanced by PHH Mortgage in its dispute with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The crux of the dispute has been the bureau’s assertion that PHH violated RESPA by steering business to private mortgage insurers that purchased reinsurance from a captive insurer owned by PHH. Most large lenders and all private MIs engaged in these arrangements prior to the housing market collapse. Early on in the case, an administrative judge agreed...

Trade groups representing the mortgage industry wrote to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last month to express their opposition to the agency’s proposal to incorporate a short survey into its consumer complaint closing process, which would replace the current “dispute” function. Under the CFPB’s proposal, which was published in the Aug. 1, 2016, Federal Register as a notice and request for comment rather than a formal proposed rule, consumers would have the option to provide feedback on a company’s response to and handling of their complaints via all channels including online, phone, fax and mail. Consumers would be able...

Recent data on the state of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and program financials suggest that the annual audit will show solid improvement in the government’s 2016 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. But there are some huge variables that could have a major impact on the final results that won’t be known until the annual audit is released late next month. The MMIF ended...

A $5 billion Ginnie Mae MSR sale could be in the works...

The attorney who argued the case for PHH is Theodore Olson, former Solicitor General of the United States.

Of the top five mitigated findings, two were related to borrower assets, two were about documentation and one about borrower credit.

Is Caliber Home Loans still looking at some of PHH’s mortgage assets?

Wells Fargo’s mortgage chief Franklin Codel is getting some new duties...

Under the proposal, consumers can rate a company’s response on a scale from one to five…