The CFPB needs to up its game and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its supervisory activities, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Office of Inspector General, the IG for the bureau. “Specifically, we found that the CFPB needs to improve its reporting timeliness and reduce the number of examination reports that have not been issued, adhere to its unequivocal standards concerning the use of standard compliance rating definitions in its examination reports, and update its policies and procedures to reflect current practices,” the OIG said. The report contains 12 recommendations designed to assist the CFPB in strengthening its supervision program, one of which is to monitor the timeliness of examination reporting against the requirements the agency...
Debt-settlement company Mission Settlement Agency and its principal, Michael Levitis, pleaded guilty in New York to conspiracy charges of mail and wire fraud, giving the CFPB a significant victory in its first criminal referral. As part of the plea deal struck with federal prosecutors, Levitis and Mission Settlement agreed to forfeit $2.2 million. Levitis faces as much as 10 years in prison, and his company could be fined as much as an additional $4.39 million. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe on Aug. 21, 2014. In addition to Levitis’ plea, four other former Mission employees, Denis Kurlyand, Boris Shulman, Felix Lemberskiy, and Zakhir Shirinov, previously pled guilty for their roles in the scheme...
The issue of the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the CFPB may finally have been put to rest now, after the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the last remnants of a case brought by the watchdog group, Judicial Watch, under the Freedom of Information Act. Back in September, the court ruled that the CFPB had properly discharged its FOIA obligations in the case for all the documents at issue except one, an e-mail from a White House staffer to a CFPB employee. At the time, “the court agreed with the CFPB’s position that it was entitled to rely on the deliberative process privilege, the attorney client/attorney work product privilege, or the presidential communications...
Many banks and credit unions support the efforts of the CFPB to bring nonbank money-transfer operations within the scope of the bureau’s oversight. In January, the agency issued a proposed rulemaking that generally would amend the current regulation that defines larger participants of certain consumer financial products and services by adding a new section defining larger participants of the international money-transfer market. The proposal lays out the framework by which the CFPB would identify a nonbank market for international money transfers and define the “larger participants” of this market that would be subject to the CFPB’s supervisory authority. Namely, an entity would be a larger participant if it has at least one million aggregate annual international money transfers. This proposal...
CFPB Servicing Rules Having Intended Effect on Foreclosures. The data and analytics division of Black Knight Financial Services recently examined the impact of the implementation of the CFPB’s new mortgage servicing rules in January and observed a sharp shift in the timing of foreclosure starts. “As the CFPB rules dictate that foreclosure cannot begin until after 120 days of delinquency, the data showed foreclosure starts at the 90-day mark have all but ceased, while four-month delinquency starts have risen over 100 percent since December,” the firm said. At the same time, foreclosure sales hit the lowest levels since 2007. “With fewer loans in the foreclosure process, these numbers will continue to decline, but the result has been an increase in...
The National Association of Realtors also urged the FHA to use its “granted discretion” to adjust loan limits for areas that have experienced significant declines.
During a recent webinar on MSR strategies, industry attorney Larry Platt of K&L Gates said he knows of “certain sales that have been held up for quite some time.” He noted: “You really can’t get a handle on what the cause of it is.”
The MBA said applications for purchase-mortgages with high loan balances have increased in recent months while applications for lower-balance mortgages has declined…
Credit officers over the past three months reported an increased demand for non-agency MBS, suggesting that private capital could be flowing more freely through the U.S. housing market, according to a Federal Reserve survey released last week. The Fed’s Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey on Dealer Financing Terms for March 2014 found little change in the credit terms among the 22 participating institutions, with the exception of securities financing, where nearly one-half of dealers reported a hike in demand for funding non-agency residential MBS. “Dealers assessed...
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