If compliance professionals are fortunate enough to discover a compliance issue before the CFPB does, they’ll likely be best served by self-reporting to the CFPB – after they get to the root cause of the problem and begin remediation efforts. That was perhaps the single most important take-away from one of the breakout sessions at the American Bankers Association’s 2014 regulatory compliance conference, held in New Orleans earlier this month. According to Christopher Spellman, corporate compliance director for Heartland Financial USA, the first step in the process is, what is the issue and how was it discovered? “The answer to that question can impact the remediation process,” Spellman said. “Obviously, it’s best if you discover it yourself internally,” said John Podvin ...

As the lending compliance landscape continues to evolve under the influence of multiple CFPB rulemakings, it’s critical compliance professionals keep their eyes on emerging risks as soon as they develop, compliance professionals said during the American Bankers Association’s recent 2014 regulatory compliance conference held earlier this month in The Big Easy. “Inevitably, I always have someone ask me what things keep me up at night. For me, I could pull out a list of all the issues I’ve identified and am working on,” said Carol Yee, chief compliance officer for People’s United Bank in Bridgeport, CT. “But what really keeps me at night are the things I have not detected. These are the emerging risks that are developing and that ...

Rod Alba, senior regulatory counsel for the American Bankers Association, told attendees at this year’s ABA regulatory compliance conference it will take the mortgage industry roughly 10 years for all the new rulemakings issued and still pending at the CFPB and elsewhere to reach a point of finality, stability and certainty. “I’ve said that it would take us possibly a full decade to get through all the rulemaking we have with mortgages. We’ve started about two or three years ago with the first being proposed and now at the beginning of this year with some of the rules [taking effect],” he said. Why a decade? “Well, not all the rules are done yet. As you know, we still have the ...

Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago were among the public commenters supporting – with some key revisions – the CFPB’s proposed “right to cure” a mortgage made in good faith that inadvertently exceeds the 3 percent points-and-fees cap under the bureau’s qualified mortgage standard.Earlier this year, the CFPB proposed allowing a cure for a points-and-fee violation if three criteria are satisfied, the first of which is if the creditor in good faith intended to originate the loan as a QM and the loan otherwise meets the requirements of a QM. Additionally, the creditor or the assignee has to refund to the consumer the dollar amount by which the loan's points and fees exceed the applicable limit and ...

Multiple lender industry representatives have asked the CFPB to extend the 30-day comment period to weigh in on the bureau’s proposal to ease financial institutions’ annual privacy-notice requirement under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act by creating an alternative delivery method which financial institutions would be able to use under certain circumstances. “The proposal describes an alternative method for delivering privacy notices with numerous conditions and qualifications that have not been previously articulated,” the industry groups said. For example, in order to take advantage of the alternative delivery method, financial institutions must not only limit their information sharing to one of the established exceptions but must also provide an alternative annual notice, maintain a dedicated webpage, offer customers a toll-free number and institute ...

The House Financial Services Committee passed a handful of CFPB-related bills earlier this month, after a previously scheduled markup had been delayed by the death of the mother of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, the ranking member on the committee. H.R. 3770, the CFPB-IG Act of 2013, introduced by Rep. Steve Stivers, R-OH, was approved 39-20. The bill would create a separate, independent inspector general for the CFPB. The CFPB currently shares an inspector general with the Federal Reserve System. H.R. 4262, the Bureau Advisory Commission Transparency Act, introduced by Rep. Sean Duffy, R-WI, was approved by voice vote. H.R. 4262 would open up CFPB advisory board meetings to the public. H.R. 4383, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Small Business ...

CFPB Deputy Director Antonakes Plays Nice With Compliance Pros. When CFPB Deputy Director Steve Antonakes appeared before a mortgage servicing industry event some months back, he raised plenty of eyebrows – and a few hackles – with some unusually blunt comments about how unhappy the CFPB was with the industry’s practices and how aggressive the bureau planned to be in combatting them. Lingering apprehensiveness was in the air when he stepped onto a stage to deliver a lunch-time address before the American Bankers Association’s 2014 regulatory compliance conference earlier this month – so much so, in fact, that when he responded to polite applause from attendees with “Hello!,” he was greeted with a nervous silence from the crowd. Antonakes didn’t skip a beat ...

RBS, which is effectively owned by the British government, still faces liability in private label security (PLS) matters tied to Greenwich Capital, a U.S. subsidiary that at one time was the largest nonprime issuer in the nation.

The supply of single-family MBS outstanding fell modestly during the first quarter of 2014, reversing three consecutive quarters of modest growth, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. As of the end of March there was $6.371 trillion of single-family MBS outstanding, down 0.3 percent from the end of 2013. The supply of single-family MBS had been drifting lower since peaking at $7.007 trillion at the end of 2009 as refinance activity – which adds little to outstanding supply – dominated the agency market and non-agency MBS issuance gained little traction. For the last nine months of 2013, the MBS market finally began...[Includes two data charts]

This week, the Federal Reserve, as expected, maintained the current pace of its reduction of support of the housing and mortgage markets, reducing its net purchases of agency MBS to $15 billion per month (down from $20 billion), beginning in July. The Fed Open Market Committee also maintained its forward guidance regarding the federal funds rate target of between zero and 0.25 percent and reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy remains appropriate. “Even after today’s action takes effect, we will continue...