In the wake of sharp increases in commercial bank borrowing from the Federal Home Loan Bank system in order to keep up with new international bank-liquidity rules, the Federal Housing Finance Agency should be more transparent in reporting FHLBank advances, according to the agency’s official watchdog. The FHFA’s Office of Inspector General noted in an audit released Wednesday that FHLBank system advances have been increasing, reaching $492 billion by year-end 2013. The growth in advances has been driven primarily by the four largest members of the system – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the city of Chicago have reached a face-saving settlement in a longstanding legal dispute over whether Fannie and Freddie, as entities under federal conservatorship, are subject to the city’s vacant-building ordinance. Under the terms of a settlement reached earlier this month but announced last week, the two GSEs will voluntarily register vacant properties with the city but won’t be subject to a $500 registration fee. The FHFA will also no longer seek to recover registration fees or penalties already paid to Chicago.
There are a variety of components for a successful compliance-management program mortgage lenders should implement, but the primary goal needs to be preventing harm to consumers, according to bank examiners with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “Given the challenges associated with the regulatory environment of today, we’d like to emphasize the importance of looking at bank operations while asking two questions from a consumer compliance perspective,” said ...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to announce a voluntary pilot project next week related to its efforts to streamline and improve the mortgage-closing process – an initiative likely to rely heavily on the industry’s latest technological capabilities, and perhaps stimulate some innovation in the process. The pilot will be formally announced on Wednesday during a live online webcast of a public forum the bureau plans to conduct at its headquarters in Washington, DC ...
It’s been a full three months since the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay final rule and qualified-mortgage definition have been implemented. So far, there have been no significant changes to origination strategies on the part of lenders, according to a Standard & Poor’s survey of rated mortgage lenders. “In terms of projected regulatory impact on recent lending activity, 84 percent of 2013 mortgage production was QM compliant, with the remaining ...
Standard & Poor’s earned a split decision this week in its counter-offensive against the federal government’s civil fraud lawsuit filed last year, which the rating agency claims is payback for its August 2011 downgrade of the U.S.’ ‘AAA’ credit rating. The Justice Department in February 2013 filed a $5.0 billion lawsuit against S&P accusing it of knowingly inflating its ratings of residential MBS and collateralized debt obligations to boost its revenue and market share in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. On Tuesday, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, CA, denied...
Total consumer complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rose 34 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, but gripes about home mortgages fell 29.3 percent from year-ago levels, according to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB, an affiliated newsletter. The strong improvement from last year was driven largely by a 46.8 percent plunge in grievances about loan modifications. But complaints about servicing in general were up 21.4 percent from the first quarter of last year, while the other five mortgage-related categories were lower. Gripes having to do with loan application or other origination-related issues fell 26.7 percent from the first quarter of 2013. The number of gripes that were responded to in a timely manner fell...
About two-thirds of banks are willing to offer loans that don’t meet standards for qualified mortgages, according to a recent survey by the American Bankers Association. Lenders are concerned about the liability that comes with non-QMs, but borrower demand for non-QMs has prompted a wider range of mortgage offerings than many had projected after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s QM standards took effect. “More and more, in talking to our banks, I would say there’s an increased comfort in going beyond QM, doing business the way they’ve traditionally done business and expecting to meet either the QM or the ability-to-repay standard.” said Jonathan Miller, deputy director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s division of depositor and consumer protection. At a meeting last week by the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Community Banking, Derek Williams, president and CEO of Columbus Community Bank, said...
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