Mortgage lenders are still smarting from a recent cyber-attack on their loan origination software provider, Ellie Mae, but a larger question now looms: If a company of Ellie’s stature was hacked, can it happen to other vendors as well? Tony Garritano, a consultant who manages a mortgage technology advocacy group called Progress in Lending, said, to the best of his knowledge, the attack on Ellie Mae is a first for the industry – and likely not the last. “As more lenders and their vendors migrate to the Internet this will happen again and again,” he said. He notes...
Did the FHFA late last summer/early fall raise concerns regarding a certain nonbank servicer’s capital in regard to a huge portfolio of mortgage servicing rights that it had bought earlier in the year from a megabank?
FHA chief Carol Galante reminded lenders that mortgage premium increases – five hikes from 2008 to 2013 – were necessary to protect the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and properly price for the risk the government insurer was taking on.
Currently, MSRs can only account for 10 percent of Tier I capital, but MBA thinks it should be raised to at least 25 percent for banks, and 50 percent for thrifts and savings and loans.
Roughly 2 percent of depositories said they will cease offering mortgages altogether because of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability to repay rule and QM standards.
The chairman and CEO of CapWealth Advisors – a private equity firm with stakes in the GSEs – was critical of all the housing reform bills introduced so far and the premise that Fannie and Freddie need to be wound down to affect reform.
Since late last year, the FHFA has decreed that it must approve any GSE servicing sale of 25,000 loans or more, which translates into roughly $5 billion of product.
Another suggestion is to increase the $100,000 threshold for “smaller loans” to $200,000 allowing for mortgage amounts beneath that level to be subject to more workable points-and-fees limits.
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