Trade organizations representing the mortgage banking industry provided a number of important suggestions for the CFPB as it proceeds with a Dodd-Frank Act requirement to assess its mortgage servicing rules at the five-year mark. The first issue the American Bankers Association raised in this regard in its comment letter to the bureau was the scope of the assessment. “The CFPB should incorporate all of the servicing rules into its review, including the rules that implement the Truth and Lending Act and the amendments that the CFPB adopted to the servicing rules in 2016,” the ABA said – not just the rules promulgated under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The bureau also should take into account the rules’ effects upon consumers...
JPMorgan Chase told the CFPB it supports the bureau’s mission of protecting consumers and recognizes that regulatory guardrails are necessary to make sure mortgage servicers adequately address consumers’ needs. “However, certain provisions of Regulation X [which implements the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act] impose burdens on servicers that increase servicing costs and impact access to consumer credit without providing proportional benefits to consumers,” the servicer said. JPMorgan was one of the industry participants commenting on the CFPB’s proposal to start assessing the effectiveness of its mortgage servicing rules under RESPA. The financial institution went on to some of the problem areas in Reg X that still need to be addressed, one of which has to do with rules for loss...
Last week, the CFPB issued a proposal to temporarily ease reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for small banks and credit unions that issue home-equity lines of credit – but based on the number of such loans, not asset size of the institution. Under the CFPB’s HMDA rules scheduled to take effect in January 2018, financial institutions are generally required to report HELOCs if they made 100 such loans in each of the past two years. Under the proposal released last week, the bureau would increase that threshold to 500 loans through calendar years 2018 and 2019 in order to give the consumer regulator the time to consider whether to make a permanent adjustment. “Home-equity lines of credit worsened ...
It’s one thing for a regulatory agency to promulgate a rule and catch a lot of slack from the affected industry. It’s quite another when another regulatory agency takes issue with a rule. The CFPB got a bit of a surprise in this regard when it issued its arbitration final rule last week: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency expressed concerns about the potential risk the rule could pose to the safety and soundness of the U.S. banking system. In a letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, OCC Acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika, a recent appointee of President Trump, said, “The OCC has a mandate to ensure the safety and soundness of the federal banking system...
Based on plunging consumer gripes sent to the CFPB, the mortgage market looks like it’s in great shape – with one glaring exception: mortgage servicing. According to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB of second quarter data from the bureau’s consumer complaint database, mortgage servicing saw a 17.5 percent jump in borrower grousing during the second quarter, but a milder 1.4 percent uptick from the first half of 2016. That latter level would be barely perceptible were it not in such stark contrast to the double-digit drop-offs seen in all other mortgage-related areas tracked by this publication. For instance, kvetching about loan modifications plummeted 81.5 percent from the first quarter of this year to the second, and [With exclusive data charts]...
The American Bankers Association and banking associations from each of the 50 states and Puerto Rico last week called upon the CFPB to delay the new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection and reporting requirements, which are scheduled to kick in Jan. 1, 2018. “We appreciate the bureau’s efforts to help lenders comply with the new reporting requirements,” the trade groups began. “Nonetheless, banks of all sizes are gravely concerned that they will not be able to assure proper compliance by the January timeframe.” For one thing, the new HMDA rules are inherently complex and very expensive to implement, according to the ABA and its affiliates. Also, they are incomplete. “Recently proposed adjustments to the rule are complicating compliance efforts...
Walter, the parent of Ditech Financial, said it expects to “acknowledge receipt” of the compliance violation and “notify the NYSE of its intention to seek to cure the deficiency…”
The CFPB has finally issued its long-awaited final rule banning mandatory arbitration in consumer financial contracts. For starters, the final rule prohibits “covered providers of certain consumer financial products and services from using an agreement with a consumer that provides for arbitration of any future dispute between the parties to bar the consumer from filing or participating in a class action concerning the covered consumer financial product or service.” Further, the final rule requires “covered providers that are involved in an arbitration [proceeding] pursuant to a pre-dispute arbitration agreement to submit specified arbitral records to the bureau and also to submit specified court records.” The new rule applies to the major markets for consumer financial products and services overseen by...
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