One servicing advisor told IMFnews that the regulator “now has the last word on all MSR transfer approvals. It began in December and has slowed the process a bit.”

The hunger for GSE speculation is also causing some investors to buy Fannie/Freddie common which has been rising of late, but not by much. However, one GSE watcher believes that buying the common, "is a fool’s game."

In terms of market effect, a DocuTech executive said that because of the new CFPB rules, "credit is going to slow down for a little while, maybe a month or so."

Hoping to jump start the non-agency MBS market, the Structured Finance Industry Group plans to establish a limited number of options on various rep and warrant issues.

The CFPB has released updates to its mortgage origination examination procedures and its mortgage servicing exam procedures. “These updates harmonize existing procedures for handling mortgage origination and mortgage servicing examinations with the revised interagency procedures that address the new mortgage regulations issued in January 2013, which have now taken effect,” the bureau said. The exam procedures for both mortgage origination and mortgage servicing now cover final rules issued by CFPB through November 2013. These...

Warner Introduces Prepaid Card Fee Legislation. Sen. Mark Warner, D‐VA, recently introduced legislation that would require new disclosures of prepaid card fees. Under Warner’s bill, the CFPB would be required to standardize the required disclosures. Under S. 1903, the Prepaid Card Disclosure Act of 2014, the bureau would be required to issue rules to establish the format for the fee disclosures. Also, the CFPB would have the authority to require an electronic link to the disclosures in the form of a quick response code, barcode or similar...

The Office of the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve Board plans to complete several audits and evaluations of the CFPB, including one on the CFPB’s own compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires the bureau to describe the impact of any proposed rule on the cost of credit for small entities. Also on tap is an evaluation of the CFPB’s supervision program for large banks and nonbanks, and a third on the bureau’s hiring process. Also, the OIG will join its counterparts at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union...

Smaller residential mortgage servicers are going to be challenged by the increased costs of new servicing requirements from the CFPB as they seek to opportunistically grow through strategic acquisitions, according to analysts at Fitch Ratings. “Many U.S. residential mortgage servicers have been working diligently to meet the new servicing requirements,” the Fitch crew said in a recent analysis. “Many large servicers have already made significant progress towards meeting the Jan. 10, 2014, deadline, in particular those servicers...

With more than 850,000 private student loans in default, and even more in delinquency, loan lenders and servicers have been made keenly aware that regulators think they need to do more to help struggling borrowers refinance their student loan debt. Earlier this month, CFPB Director Richard Cordray, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Acting Deputy Treasury Secretary Mary Miller convened a meeting with the nation’s largest private student lenders and servicers to review the situation and to drum up solutions. One of the big problems, according...

The CFPB’s emphasis on consumer complaints has injected a whole new compliance dynamic for lenders of all types and sizes. And in order to successfully manage what is likely the most problematic complaint – confusion – lenders are going to need a more sophisticated triage process. “In an environment in which regulators cite customer confusion as a primary rationale for actions on everything from advertising and sales practices to rewards programs to arbitration clauses, establishing a high threshold for a matter to qualify as a...