Flagstar in Talks with CFPB Over Alleged Loss Mitigation Violations. Flagstar Bancorp, the parent of the nation’s 17th largest residential servicer, disclosed in a new regulatory filing that it is in talks with the CFPB over alleged violations of federal law arising from the bank’s loss mitigation practices and default servicing operations dating back to 2011. Flagstar Bank FSB, which owns roughly $69 billion in mortgage servicing rights, said it has already provided the CFPB with documents and “other information” regarding the matter in response to a civil investigative demand. “While the bank intends to vigorously defend against any enforcement action that may be brought, it has commenced discussions with the CFPB staff to determine if a settlement can be ...
CFPB, Other Feds, Issue Guidance on Unfair or Deceptive Credit Practices. In another changing of the regulatory guard, the Federal Reserve is repealing its Regulation AA (unfair or deceptive acts or practices), as per the mandate of the Dodd-Frank Act, reflecting the fact that the CFPB has inherited the Fed’s authority over such practices. At the same time, the Fed joined the CFPB, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union Administration, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in issuing joint interagency guidance on the subject. The guidance notes that while the Federal Trade Commission’s credit practices rule remains in effect, the credit practices rules for banks, savings associations, and federal credit unions are being repealed as ...
CFPB Makes New Senior Hires. Last week, the CFPB announced it was bringing mortgage industry veteran Patricia McClung on board as assistant director for mortgage markets. Prior to coming to the bureau, McClung worked at the FHA as a senior housing policy advisor, after a stint at Realtors Property Resource, a technology subsidiary of National Association of Realtors. The majority of her career was spent at Freddie Mac. Janneke Ratcliffe joins the CFPB as assistant director for financial education. Since 2005, Ratcliffe has served as executive director at the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ratcliffe’s career includes a 10-year stint at GE Capital in mortgage and mortgage insurance. Meanwhile, Will Wade-Gery has ...
Bipartisan Legislation Would Increase Threshold for CFPB Supervision. Right before Congress took off for its summer recess, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democrat Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana introduced S. 2732, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Examination and Reporting Threshold Act of 2014. The act would increase the current $10 billion asset threshold figure at which regulated depository institutions are subject to direct examination and reporting requirements of the CFPB to $50 billion. “The higher threshold would be substantially the same as the threshold for a bank to be designated ‘systemically important’ (i.e., assets of $50 billion or more),” said attorney Barbara Mishkin, of counsel with the Ballard Spahr law firm, in a recent client note. CBO Pegs ...
September 4: The Financial Stability Oversight Council, of which the CFPB is a member, is scheduled to convene for a closed session on Thursday, Sept. 4. The preliminary agenda includes a discussion of nonbank financial company designations, consideration of the council’s fiscal year 2015 budget, a discussion of the council’s work on asset management, and an update on the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s recent review of resolution plans submitted by large, complex banking organizations. September 8: The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are due to return to Capitol Hill the week of Sept. 8. Lawmakers will be faced with a shrinking window of opportunity to consider numerous CFPB-related bills that have been passed by the ...
The New York AG has secured a temporary restraining order barring the loan mod companies from collecting advance fees. The state's top cop also froze their bank accounts.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released an updated bulletin regarding servicing transfers due to continued concerns about how troubled borrowers fare when servicing moves from one firm to another. “In particular, CFPB examiners will carefully scrutinize transfers of loans with pending loss mitigation applications or approved trial and permanent modification plans,” the regulator said. “Examples of good practices by servicers include flagging those loans and ...
Roughly $1 billion in damages will flow through to the FHA and Ginnie Mae from Bank of America’s record $16.65 billion global mortgage-backed securities settlement with the Department of Justice. Although most of the DOJ’s case centered around faulty private-label MBS that BofA and its forbears (namely Countrywide and Merrill Lynch) underwrote during the housing boom, a small piece of the settlement is tied to servicing chores that the bank did for Ginnie Mae. And apparently, BofA didn’t do a very good job of servicing the underlying product. The bank took over as the subservicer on roughly $26.2 billion in mortgage servicing rights that once belonged to Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, a large nonbank based in Ocala, FL. When TBW went bust in the second half of 2009, BofA was given the subservicing contract. “BofA serviced the loans for us,” said Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer. “And they did a ...
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