More changes, or at least additional guidance, may be in the offing for the pending Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is scheduled to take effect next year, agency Director Richard Cordray said last week during an appearance on Capitol Hill. During a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-CA, pointed out, “Studies have shown that in some geographic areas, it is possible to determine the identity of nearly 100 percent of the borrowers using the data that lenders are required to collect and report by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. This is despite the fact that that act supposedly provides for anonymous data in its final form.” Sherman also ...
Visits by CFPB Director Richard Cordray to Capitol Hill are always times of high drama, or high theater, depending on your perspective, and his visit last week to deliver his agency’s semi-annual report to the House Financial Services Committee was no exception. One of the hot buttons Republicans kept pressing was the bureau’s use of civil investigative demands. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, got the ball rolling by bringing up the bureau’s proposed changes related to the disclosure of records information, issued in August 2016. “As I understand it, this amendment would impose what would amount to an unprecedented gag order on any individual or entity under investigation by the CFPB,” ...
The CFPB is not letting any grass grow under its feet on the examination and supervision front, the bureau’s latest semi-annual report to Congress shows. Under its previous Examiner Commissioning Program (ECP), which became effective Oct. 27, 2014, the agency had issued 173 commissions to examiners, field managers, and headquarters staff. Under the new ECP, an additional 20 examiners have achieved commissioned examiner status, bringing the total number of commissioned examiners to 187, which accounts for attrition through retirement and departures from the CFPB. On the technology front, the bureau is upgrading its existing examination management software. “The new system will aid the CFPB in supervising and enforcing federal consumer financial law by utilizing current technology to support monitoring of ...
Community lending representatives met with Trump administration officials last week to push a package of pro-growth, regulatory relief proposals, including a number of changes to the mortgage rules promulgated by the CFPB. The meeting was held with Treasury Department officials under President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Treasury to review existing laws, treaties, regulations, guidance, reporting and recordkeeping to determine if they promote or inhibit federal regulation of the U.S. financial system as per Trump’s core principles outlined in Executive Order 13772. Meeting with the Trump administration officials were a handful of CEOs of bank that are members of the Independent Community Bankers of America.Among the proposed changes the trade group advocated was a more expansive qualified mortgage ...
Consumer complaints to the CFPB about mortgages are down in every single category tracked by this publication, and in fact show double-digit declines in all but one grouping, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside the CFPB. Total mortgage-related criticisms to the bureau came to a relatively scant 8,334 for the period ending March 31, 2017, the second lowest first quarter total in the five-plus years since the agency began collecting such data in the fourth quarter of 2011. That number represents a decline of 14.8 percent from the fourth quarter and an even larger drop of 23.0 percent from the same period one year ago.On the loan modification front, borrower gripes fell to 2,987 during 1Q17, ...
In a speech at a National Community Reinvestment Coalition conference in Washington, DC, recently, CFPB Director Richard Cordray spelled out the ways the bureau is working to end the practice of redlining, and not just in the provision of mortgage credit. “We are working to end discrimination in mortgage lending, help make sure that safe and reliable financial products are more readily available, and expand access to credit for those who are currently shut out,” Cordray told attendees. He cited two cases in which his agency worked with the U.S. Department of Justice, one involving Bancorp South and another involving Hudson City Savings Bank. In the Bancorp South case, the government asserted the lender denied some mortgage loans to African-Americans ...
In remarks recently at an event of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CFPB Director Richard Cordray spelled out how the bureau is trying to aid the mortgage industry’s compliance efforts by promoting greater understanding of its rules, as well as regulatory review, streamlining and modernization. “Our efforts with the mortgage rules went much further than simply reacting passively to industry inquiries (though we have fielded thousands of them),” the director said. “We also took affirmative steps to help the industry understand our rules through publications, videos, webinars, and phone calls with individual institutions.” The bureau adopted a diagnostic and corrective approach to supervision in the early months to ease anxieties about the difficulties of complying with certain components of the ...
Thanks in part to the recent consent order Wells Fargo reached with the CFPB, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently gave the top mortgage lender in the U.S. a rare “needs to improve” rating under the Community Reinvestment Act – this despite citing Wells’ overall “outstanding” performance on the lender’s performance examination components, the lender noted. The rating is based on the most recent CRA performance evaluation, which covers the years 2009-2012. The agency referenced the lender’s recent $100 million consent order with the CFPB, and a related action brought by the city and county of Los Angeles that resulted in a $50 million fine, and numerous other enforcement actions. The OCC said the bank’s overall CRA performance ...
New York State Aligns State Law With TRID. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, recently signed into law Senate Bill S982, legislation that tweaks the existing state legal definition of the “consummation” of a mortgage loan to synchronize with the Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure Rule promulgated by the CFPB.... Industry Need to Get TRID-Compliant Boosts DocMagic’s Bottom Line. Industry vendor DocMagic, based in Torrance, CA, late last week reported a 42 percent increase in revenue for 2016, due in large part to industry demand for products that enable compliance with the CFPB’s Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure Rule, otherwise known as TRID....
RSS