United Guaranty last week filed papers for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a first step to split from its parent company, American International Group, Inc. UG, the mortgage insurance subsidiary of AIG, has filed a proposed aggregate offering of $100 million of common stock but pricing has not been determined. The IPO will not launch until later this year, but if the weak IPO market picks up soon, “it would change things a great deal,” according to an analysis by investment research firm Seeking Alpha. In late January, AIG announced...
Mortgage lending allies, free-market advocates and Congressional critics of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week took issue with some of the CFPB’s most significant mortgage rules and its use of regulatory enforcement actions to establish policy they said would be more appropriately set in the traditional public notice and comment process. Former Federal Trade Commission official Todd Zywicki, now a law professor at George Mason University, told members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that many smaller banks have chosen to exit the mortgage market rather than bear the regulatory cost and risk associated with complying with the numerous mortgage regulations promulgated by the CFPB. Citing a survey of small banks conducted by GMU’s Mercatus Center, Zywicki said...
By imposing a one-size-fits-all mechanical underwriting system for mortgages, the QM rule has deprived community banks of a significant competitive advantage over megabanks, he argued…