The IG accused the FHFA of shirking its responsibility to effectively examine Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...

Several large banks accept the current acknowledgement agreement, while others avoid it like the plague.

The Community Mortgage Lenders of America said the bill strikes a balance of maintaining safe lending while freeing up resources so more consumers can obtain a mortgage.

Who is Silver Point and why does it now own so much of PHH?

Non-agency mortgage-backed security issuers and investors were getting more comfortable in recent years with third-party due diligence reviews of less than 100 percent of the mortgages in an MBS due to the exceptionally strong performance of new originations. However, analysts at Morningstar Credit Ratings suggest that most non-agency MBS backed by new mortgages will be subject to full reviews due to uncertainty regarding the CFPB’s integrated-disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, otherwise known as TRID. The reviews help identify and cure compliance issues and protect MBS investors from TRID-related losses. “Most post-crisis transactions carry out due diligence on every loan, and we...

Last week, at their national convention in Cleveland, the Republicans issued their 2016 campaign platform, which featured some particularly sharp rhetoric towards the CFPB. The GOP called for either getting rid of the agency in the broader context of repealing and replacing the Dodd-Frank Act, or at least altering the bureau’s leadership structure and its funding mechanism. If they can’t abolish the CFPB outright, the Republicans want to replace the current single directorship with a bipartisan commission and subject the bureau to the congressional appropriations process in lieu of its funding from the Federal Reserve. “The worst of Dodd-Frank is the CFPB, deliberately designed to be a rogue agency,” the platform stated.

With finalized amendments to the CFPB’s mortgage servicing rules due to be released within the next several weeks, one of the big issues for servicers will be just how much time the bureau grants them to implement all the necessary changes to their loan administration systems. “We have a pretty good idea of what the bureau is going to do in substance,” Donald Lampe, a partner in the financial services group in the Washington, DC, office of the Morrison & Foerster law firm, told Inside the CFPB. “And so the question is going to be, what is the implementation time period going to be so that these changes can be fully implemented?”

A proposal from House Republicans to treat mortgage loans held in a bank’s portfolio as qualified mortgages received divergent reviews at a recent hearing by the House Financial Services Committee.The proposal was included in the Financial CHOICE Act sponsored by Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. Treating mortgages in bank portfolios as QMs would provide QM status to loans that would otherwise fail to meet those standards, including interest-only products and mortgages not eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because the debt-to-income ratios are above 43.0 percent. Adam Levitin, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, said the Financial CHOICE Act would “eviscerate” consumer protections in mortgage lending.

In May, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Robins v. Spokeo, Inc. that a plaintiff has to demonstrate that he or she suffered “concrete” and “real” harm in order to have standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution to successfully sue for statutory damages under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.The CFPB has previously argued that is not necessarily so, and with the SCOTUS remanding the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the bureau has recently reiterated its argument in an amicus brief with the lower court. The specific question in this case is whether the plaintiff (Robins) identified an injury-in-fact under Article III of...