Early this month, the CFPB denied a petition made by UniRush, the program manager for RushCard, a prepaid debit card, to modify a civil investigative demand (CID) the firm had received from the bureau near the end of October. The CID seeks documents, written reports and answers to interrogatories in connection with the bureau’s investigation into whether prepaid debit card issuers, processors, card networks, service providers to prepaid debit card issuers, or other unnamed persons “have engaged in or are engaging in unlawful acts and practices in connection with the offering, operating or servicing of prepaid debit cards.” UniRush seemed to shoot itself in the foot, according to the bureau’s decision and order. The CFPB’s account of the chronology suggests ...

Republican leadership on the House Financial Services Committee is accusing the CFPB of engaging in a cover up, slamming the agency for deliberately using flawed data that falsely suggests auto dealers are discriminating in the pricing of loans to minority buyers. The Republican staffers on the committee released a number of documents that appear to show the officials at the CFPB not only were aware their data was flawed but also that they discussed how to prevent people outside the agency from discovering it. For instance, a May 2013 draft of a memo to CFPB Director Richard Cordray revealed that bureau staff had “reason to believe that our proxy is less accurate in identifying the race/ethnicity of particular individuals than ...

The more consumers complain to the CFPB about their financial services providers, the more likely those providers are to be fined, and the higher those fines are likely to be, new research suggests. For instance, lenders and other financial services providers face a 58 percent chance of being fined when complaints to the CFPB breach the 2,000 threshold for a company, according to an analysis by PerformLine, a “software-as-a-service” marketing compliance company based in Morristown, NJ. Among the other key findings were a 34 percent increase in the number of consumer complaints year-over-year since 2012, and average fines ranging from $134 million (for companies that received 2,000-10,000 complaints) to $758 million (for companies with 10,000+ complaints). Sliced another way, the ...

Consumers appear to have more to complain about to the CFPB when it comes to their various bank account products and services and less when it comes to money transfers these days. According to the latest analysis by Inside the CFPB of third quarter 2015 information from the bureau’s consumer complaint database, consumer gripes about bank accounts rose 5.4 percent at the nine-month mark in the year versus the same period in 2014. However, consumer kvetching fell by 4.6 percent from the second quarter. Things seem to be much better in the money transfer space, which saw end-user grumblings drop a big 25.4 percent year over year as of the end of September, and down a significant 12.6 percent quarter ...

Do TRID-Related Loan Delays Bolster Warehouse Profits? It Looks That Way. Thanks to loan closing delays caused by the new “TRID” integrated disclosure rule, mortgages are staying on warehouse lines longer, increasing profits for banks that play in that space. David Frase, president of warehouse lending for Southwest Bank, Dallas, told IMFnews, an affiliated email newsletter, that “loans are staying on lines longer so we make more money.” Frase, however, said he expects that, in time, the TRID kinks will be worked out and that loan closing times will become more normalized. Southwest’s specialty entails mini-correspondent or “broker to banker” lines of credit. “Turn times are slower and processing times are longer,” said Frase. According to figures compiled by Inside ...

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to $180.2 billion in November, hitting a new low for the year, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Such a low reading is indicative of a lack of liquidity in the market, but by now, investment bankers and policy makers are no longer wringing their hands about the number. The complacency, in part, is fueled...

The highway funding bill signed into law last week included a provision that expanded exemptions to standards for qualified mortgages. QMs generally cannot have balloon-payment features, though some small lenders in rural areas have been allowed to originate balloon mortgages that can be classified as QMs. Previously, the QM balloon exemption applied to small lenders that operate predominantly in rural or underserved areas. H.R. 22, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act ...

Compliance issues involving disclosure requirements that took effect in October could be delaying the issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities, according to a report this week from Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service said several third-party review firms found compliance violations on more than 90 percent of a sample of 300 mortgages reviewed for compliance with the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule. Many of the TRID violations were ... [Includes three briefs]

The national loan limit for FHA-insured single-family mortgages will remain unchanged throughout 2016, but 188 counties will see their high-cost limits rise due to house-price changes. The FHA national loan limit “ceiling” for forward mortgages will remain at $625,500, while the FHA “floor” will stay at $271,050 for next year. For example, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Marin, and Silicon Valley, where the loan limits are currently at $625,500, will see no change in 2016. The same will be true for many counties whose FHA loan limits fall between the national floor and ceiling, like Sacramento and Fresno, for instance. On the other hand, 188 counties like Napa, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego will see their forward loan limits increase by at least $1,150 to as much as $30,240. Each year, FHA readjusts its loan limits based on 115 percent of the median house price in the area. The loan-limit floor is set at ...

An estimated $117.1 billion in VA-guaranteed home loans went into Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed security pools during the first nine months of 2015, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of agency data. The totals for securitized VA purchase and refinance loans in Ginnie pools were almost even - $57.8 billion and $57.6 billion, respectively. Modified VA loans were also included in the total. The volume of VA-backed Ginnie securitization during the first nine months of 2015 far exceeded the $109.5 billion reported for all of 2014. Lenders attributed the production spike to a growing population of active-duty military personnel and veterans returning from foreign deployment and to better outreach efforts. VA originations accounted for 12.1 percent of loans underlying Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MBS and 25.2 percent of insured loans in those pools. The securitized VA loans showed an ... [ 1 chart ]