A number of industry groups ramped up their efforts to convince the CFPB to revisit its auto financing enforcement policy, after the release of an industry-funded report that challenged the analysis that undergirds it. The impetus behind the challenge is a Charles River Associates study commissioned by the American Financial Services Association that analyzed the complexities of the indirect finance market and evaluated the CFPB’s current fair lending investigations, with special attention to the proxy methodology used by the bureau. The CRA study concluded that “observed variations in ‘dealer reserve’ at the financial institution portfolio level are mitigated when market complexities are considered and adjustments are made for proxy bias and error.” This suggests to industry representatives that there are ...

The CFPB could issue its long-awaited payday loan proposed rule as early as July, according to Isaac Boltansky, an analyst with Compass Point Research & Trading in Washington, DC. “We expect the CFPB to initiate a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) panel in the days ahead, which will serve as the starting gun for a rulemaking process we expect to last through 2015,” Boltansky said in a recent client note. “Given the contentious and complicated nature of the small-dollar rulemaking effort, we estimate that the proposed rule will be released this summer with the final rule release possibly slipping to 2016.” More specifically, he expects the SBREFA panel to convene at least by the end of February. From ...

Jack Guttentag, professor of finance emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, advises borrowers to ignore the CFPB’s controversial online rate checker tool. “It is completely useless,” he asserted in a recent online blog post. “The tool a borrower needs is a ‘shopping rate,’ a rate that a competing lender should match or better. The CFPB shows a distribution of rates, and leaves it to the shopper to decide which rate in the distribution is the shopping rate, while providing no guidance on how to do it.” For example, given the loan features he entered on Feb. 10, the CFPB tool told Guttentag that, “In Pennsylvania, most lenders in our data are offering rates at or below ...

With many small and mid-tier mortgage companies and banks increasingly worried about straying from compliance with the CFPB’s expanding rules and requirements, vendor representatives are working overtime to alleviate their clients’ anxieties and keep them on task and on budget. “We’re really seeing a lot of fear in the CFPB’s steadily intensifying regulations and requirements,” said Mary Beth Doyle, founder and co-owner of Loyalty Express, a mortgage marketing technology vendor in Woburn, MA. As recently as a year or a year-and-a-half ago, companies were saying they would wait to hear about a new rule themselves from the CFPB. “And today, people are more panic driven. There’s this sense of paralysis because everyone’s afraid of stepping out of bounds and not ...

Rep. Waters Wants Clarity on Corinthian Student Loan Refunds. House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters, D-CA, wants more clarity about the recent agreement to provide $480 million in financial relief to students wrestling with predatory loans from now-defunct Corinthian Colleges. In letters to CFPB Director Richard Cordray and David Hawn, president and CEO of Education Credit Management Group, the company that acquired a majority of the college’s campuses, Waters said, “[A]s you both well know, the student loan servicing industry, much like the mortgage servicing industry, has often worked as a disservice to its customers. “Furthermore, students who are to receive private debt relief were intentionally misled when the debt was incurred, and there is undoubtedly confusion among ...

CashCall recently started offering loans that do not meet qualified mortgage standards. The lender’s “NQM” program targets borrowers who cannot qualify for agency financing. The minimum credit score is 680 and CashCall is flexible in determining ability to repay, including the use of cash flow from investment accounts. Home Loan Servicing Solutions announced this week that no non-agency mortgage-backed security investors have ... [Includes two briefs]

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s update to Regulation AB won’t prompt many issuers to change whether they issue deals in the public market or private market, according to industry participants. After the so-called Reg AB2 takes effect, issuers of SEC-registered MBS and ABS will have to disclose more information. The regulation includes an exemption for 144A private placements, which could provide a way for issuers to avoid the SEC’s disclosure requirements. At the recent ABS Vegas conference sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network, many issuers indicated....

Disclosure of findings from third-party due diligence on MBS and ABS are set to go from a few paragraphs in a rating report to a detailed form with certification from the due diligence firm, thanks to standards established by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The standards take effect for deals that price June 15 or later. Within five days before the first sale in an offering that will receive a rating, the findings and conclusions of any third-party due diligence report obtained by the issuer or underwriter must be disclosed in Form ABS-15G or the rating report. The disclosure requirement applies to private placements along with SEC-registered deals. “Our biggest challenge now is educating...

Industry participants in the Treasury Market Practices Group raised questions about the tax consequences and other issues involved in the plan to develop a “single security” in a meeting with the Federal Housing Finance Agency last month. The recently released minutes of the meeting do not provide much detail. The FHFA representatives described in broad terms the project to create a fungible MBS that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would both issue in the to-be-announced market. In response, “Most TMPG members noted...

Cherry Hill Mortgage Investment Corp., which has 76 percent of its assets invested in MBS, plans to whittle that down a bit and make a major push into mortgage servicing rights. The question is: will other real estate investment trusts follow suit? One REIT executive, who spoke under the condition his name not be used, said...