HomeBridge Financial Services this week agreed to buy the assets of Prospect Mortgage, marking one of the largest acquisitions of the year and stoking the hopes of investment bankers that more deals may lay ahead. But HomeBridge’s purchase of Prospect could turn out to be an anomaly. According to HomeBridge CEO Peter Norden, the two parties had been talking on and off about combining forces for roughly five years. For Norden, the combination of the two nonbanks – both privately held – is...

The $185.0 million settlement Wells Fargo agreed to in early September regarding retail banking sales practices has impacted the lender’s mortgage operations, according to bank officials. Timothy Sloan, Wells’ president and CEO, said mortgage referral activity declined significantly after the settlement was announced. “Mortgage referrals from retail banking, which account for 10.0 percent of our year-to-date mortgage originations, were down 24.0 percent from August to September,” he said during Wells’ recent earnings call. Sloan noted...

A CID recipient could not disclose its receipt of such a demand to counterparties under financing agreements, loan sales agreements, and purchase and sale agreements, which routinely require such disclosures.

TRID rule changes mean mortgage technology vendors will need to retro-fit software into multiple versions, which further stretches the resources…

The CFPB also found that some banks used employees from a staffing agency who were not properly registered or licensed...

In an interview with IMFnews, Freddie CEO Don Layton defended the GSE’s move toward automated appraisals…

Earlier in the year, the IRS said it planned to strengthen the protections for e-services accounts by requiring a stronger identity verification process for existing and new accounts.

The Cato Institute said the former Freddie executive Anthony “Buddy” Piszel consistently received exemplary performance reviews and was cleared of any wrongdoing…

Are nonbanks 'shadow' institutions, and if so, is that a bad thing?

Top mortgage industry representatives urged the CFPB to do more to facilitate the curing of loans with errors under the agency’s controversial Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure rule, otherwise known as TRID. One such organization was the Housing Policy Council of the Financial Services Roundtable. In its comment letter to the CFPB, the HPC said providing more formal guidance on when and how lenders may correct or cure errors is not just a question of potential liability for lenders; it’s also important in reducing the uncertainty of customers if they experience varying interpretations by different lenders. “We recognize that it is difficult to anticipate all types of potential errors in advance,” said the HPC. “There ...