State regulators filed a complaint last week seeking to prevent the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency from creating a national charter for nonbank financial technology companies. The charter would preempt state laws, eliminating a “patchwork” of compliance issues for marketplace lenders and other fintech companies. “If the OCC is allowed to proceed with the creation of a special-purpose nonbank charter, it will set a dangerous precedent that any federal agency can ...
Democrats unsuccessfully pushed amendments that would try to keep President Trump, anyone in his administration or any of his businesses from benefitting from any provision in H.R. 10.
One of the objectives in resolving the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be minimizing the risk of market disruption in transitioning to the replacement system, according to industry executives. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest proposal for fixing the two government-sponsored enterprises is largely predicated on recent developments in the GSE world, including the first stage of the common securitization platform, extensive product standardization between the two, and the rapid acceptance of credit-risk transfer structures. Those are...
Can the financially troubled and regulator-challenged Ocwen Financial survive? It’s not an unfair question given its most recent travails and this week’s news that it struck a $425.0 million transaction “in principle” to sell some of the cash flows on $117 billion in mostly non-agency servicing rights to New Residential Investment Corp. As the weekend approached, analysts that follow the company were speculating that Ocwen is going through what looks like a controlled liquidation, selling off assets – mostly the cash flow stream on its servicing portfolio – and buying time while it fights regulatory sanctions in 31 states. The company is...
The Supreme Court of the United States this week ruled in favor of Miami in a case involving losses the city claimed were related to “predatory mortgages.” The ultimate impact of the ruling remains unclear, as the lawsuits will proceed in a lower court, potentially fizzling out or leading to a plethora of similar claims. In Bank of America v. City of Miami, BofA and Wells Fargo challenged lawsuits brought under the Fair Housing Act. The city alleged that discriminatory conduct by the banks in their origination of predatory mortgages before the financial crisis led to a disproportionate number of foreclosures and vacancies in majority-minority neighborhoods. Miami said the loans and foreclosures impaired the city’s effort to assure racial integration, diminished its property-tax revenue and increased demand for police, fire and other municipal services. In a 5-3 ruling supported by the Supreme Court’s more liberal-leaning justices, the court determined...
The House Financial Services Committee this week began marking up the Republican majority’s alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act, H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, introduced late last month by committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. As previously reported, the bill would make numerous changes to the mortgage lending regulatory landscape, and eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rulemaking, supervisory and enforcement authority, among other significant changes. As Inside Mortgage Finance went to press, lawmakers of both parties were squabbling...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week warned that a large downpayment alone is not enough to prove the ability to repay a non-qualified mortgage when the loan was underwritten based on the consumer’s assets. “As an initial matter, a downpayment cannot be treated as an asset for purposes of considering the consumer’s income or assets under the ATR rule,” said the CFPB. “The ATR rule requires creditors to consider a consumer’s reasonably expected income or assets, ‘other than the value of the dwelling, including any real property attached to the dwelling that secures the loan.’” Further, while the size of a downpayment generally affects the loan amount, the ATR rule already accounts...
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