Stock analysts have claimed that Lawsky has been aggressively investigating Ocwen so he can make headlines, paving the way for an eventual run for public office.

Lenders are fearful the HMDA proposal does not adequately ensure consumer privacy and that additional costs will be passed onto borrowers.

Are investors in Ocwen jumping for joy now that word is out that NYDFS chief Benjamin Lawsky might be leaving next year?

The Fannie product also had less expensive mortgage insurance and allowed the borrower to cancel the policy once the LTV reached 80 percent of the home’s value.

Fannie and Freddie have been exploring the adaptation of alternative credit scores for months, but have yet to take action.

Mortgage M&A activity remains red hot. We understand that RPM Mortgage of California is working on another acquisition...

Now that the mortgage lending industry has had about three months to comb through the details of the CFPB’s proposed expansion of reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, it has found more cause to dislike it than upon first glance. “While we support the purpose of HMDA – to provide information on the availability of credit in the home mortgage market – we are concerned that the proposal to markedly increase HMDA data reporting and coverage goes beyond the law’s purposes in some areas and will unduly harm competition and increase costs in others,” a handful of leading industry groups told the bureau in a joint comment letter last week. “At the same time, we do not believe that the ...

Consumer advocacy groups say the CFPB isn’t going far enough to expand mortgage industry reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The California Reinvestment Coalition and 41 other state organizations suggested a handful of changes to the proposal, each of which would likely add to the reporting burden for companies. Among the changes the California groups want is requiring loan modification data to be reported by banks and servicers, along with disaggregating the overly broad “Asian” race category to allow for more accurate reporting. They also would like to see the CFPB capture more information about languages spoken during a loan transaction, and have companies disclose if a borrower is going to own a property with somebody who is ...

CFPB examiners have identified a number of unfair or deceptive acts or practices on the part of an unspecified number of bank and nonbank servicers of federal and private student loans, according to the latest supervisory highlights report released recently by the bureau. One problematic practice involved “one or more supervised entities” allocating partial payments in a way that maximizes late fees. CFPB examiners have reviewed how servicers allocate payments when a borrower pays less than the total amount due on all of the loans in the borrower’s account, according to the report. “Examiners found that partial payments were being allocated proportionally ... among all the loans, resulting in all of the loans in a borrower’s account becoming delinquent,” said ...

In the first half of 2014, CFPB examiners conducted targeted reviews for compliance with the bureau’s new mortgage servicing rules and found mixed results, according to the agency’s latest supervisory highlight report. For example, the new rules require servicers to maintain policies and procedures to achieve specific objectives in areas such as loss mitigation, servicing transfers and service provider oversight. “In reviewing this area, examiners found that the policies and procedures at several servicers appeared to be reasonably designed to meet the specific objectives laid out in the rule,” said the new report. For instance, some servicers’ policies and procedures clearly outlined the ways in which they access and provide timely and accurate information. “These policies and procedures included specific ...