The FHFA IG job candidate must be able to withstand "moderate to arduous physical exertion involving walking and standing, use of firearms, and exposure to inclement weather."

Analysts at FBR & Co. view the ban as an “earnings issue” because “replacement financing would likely be more expensive than existing financing.”

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The CFPB finalized revisions to its international remittance transfer rule, most notably including a five-year extension for a temporary exception that allows insured depository institutions to estimate fees and exchange rates in certain circumstances. The original expiration date for the exception was July 21, 2015. The extension pushes the shelf life of the exception out to July 21, 2020. If the temporary exception were to expire in July 2015, current market conditions would make it impossible for insured institutions to know the exact fees and exchange rates associated with a minority of their remittance transfers, according to the CFPB. “Without the exemption, these insured institutions reported that they would have been unable to send some transfers to certain parts of ...

Officials from the CFPB jumped into the mortgage compliance weeds during a webinar last week to answer some industry questions about its Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure rule, otherwise known as “TRID,” which takes effect in August of next year. Among the questions bureau staff discussed were a handful related to disclosure and re-disclosure timing. For instance, a number of industry representatives asked whether the seven-day waiting period before consummation that applies to loan estimates also applies to revised disclosures. “No, the seven-day waiting period is a Truth in Lending Act statutory waiting period that applies today to the initial TILA disclosures, and after August of next year, to the loan estimate provided after application ...

The Consumer Bankers Association took issue with letters CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Rohit Chopra recently sent to financial institutions that have contractual relationships with colleges and universities, calling for public disclosure of their campus marketing agreements. Chopra’s letter stated the institutions’ failure to be transparent about the terms of these proprietary agreements “may pose potential consumer protection risks.” However, CBA President and CEO Richard Hunt said Chopra did not provide any basis for or evidence to support these provocative claims. “On the contrary, relationships between banks and schools often provide students with great benefits by providing much needed financial literacy, safe and secure debit cards, low or no-fee checking accounts and access to convenient on-campus branches and ATMs; and students ...