SunTrust Mortgage will pay $320 million to resolve a criminal investigation and allegations that the bank misled homeowners interested in the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Department of Justice announced late last week. In the first settled case of its kind, SunTrust allegedly misrepresented how long it would take to determine if a borrower was qualified for HAMP and how long the trial period would last. “Specifically, SunTrust made...
A number of consumer advocates strongly oppose a proposal from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would allow lenders to cure mistakes regarding debt-to-income ratios on qualified mortgages. Lenders calling for the DTI ratio right-to-cure on QMs are making “Chicken Little” claims to support their arguments, according to the National Consumer Law Center and the National Association of Consumer Advocates. In April, the CFPB requested...
Mortgage wholesalers are being extra careful these days on how much they pay loan brokers in a table-funding transaction to make sure they don’t run afoul of the points-and-fees cap on qualified mortgages set by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance over the past few weeks, table funders are capping those fees at anywhere from 2.20 percent to 2.75 percent. Some may go as low as 1.40 percent. The cap for qualified mortgage eligibility set by the CFPB under the Dodd-Frank Act is...
The Democratic proposal calls for private mortgage capital to backstop the first 5 percent of conventional-mortgage securitizations with the remaining 95 percent of risk shared “on a pari passu basis.”
An early analysis of second quarter loan level data suggests that residential originations were a little better in the April to June time-frame than some might believe. See this website on Thursday for more information…
Bankers Keep up the Push for CFPB-Related Legislation. The American Bankers Association is making a member push to drum up on Capitol Hill for three pieces of legislation designed to ease the regulatory burden for bankers, H.R. 2673, H.R. 4521 and H.R. 4466. H.R. 2673, the Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act, would treat as a qualified mortgage any residential mortgage loan made by a creditor so long as it is held in portfolio. H.R. 4521, the Community Institution Mortgage Relief Act of 2014, would expand the CFPB’s small servicers exception to include servicers of 20,000 mortgage loans or less, and would revise the small creditor exemption to include loans that are held by creditors with assets of $10 billion ...
Late last month, the Government Accountability Office released a report on virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, including a recommendation that the CFPB identify and join existing interagency working groups to ensure that consumer protection issues are taken into consideration. “CFPB might be a relevant participant in a broader set of collaborative efforts on virtual currencies because virtual currency systems provide a new way of making financial transactions, and CFPB’s responsibilities include ensuring that consumers have timely and understandable information to make responsible decisions about financial transactions,” the GAO said. According to the report, CFPB officials said they are reviewing how the bureau’s consumer protection responsibilities are implicated by consumer use (or potential use) of virtual currencies. “CFPB officials said they ...
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