U.S. military personnel are still having to deal with problems and challenges when they contact student loan servicers to invoke the military rights and protections earned through their service, according to a recently released report from the CFPB. Among the problems cited in the report are continued mistakes handling service members’ student loan repayments, resulting in improper denials of legal benefits, negative credit reporting, and shoddy follow-through on legal protections for military families. Complaints also include frustrations from grieving parents seeking to discharge a co-signed loan following the death of their child. Specifically, the report found that service members continue to report difficulties in obtaining the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act interest rate cap of 6 percent, despite action by federal ...
Nearly two dozen Democrats in the U.S. Senate are asking CFPB Director Richard Cordray to speed up a Dodd-Frank Act rulemaking to require lenders to report small business loan data similar to mortgage loans under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.“You have acknowledged that the collection and disclosure of small business lending data would be similar in theory and practice to the collection and disclosure of mortgage credit data under HMDA. As the agency moves to finalize the HMDA rule, we believe that now is the time for it to initiate its Regulation B rulemaking,” said the letter to Cordray, written by Democrats led by Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ. Citing the nearly 28 million small businesses in the U.S., the ...
Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has called into question “the adequacy and thoroughness of the CFPB’s analysis of small entity impacts” as a part of its payday lending rulemaking process and requested the Government Accountability Office to investigate the issue and release its findings. Among the issues the senator raised was whether the selection of small entity representatives is conducted in a way that guarantees adequate input from a reasonable distribution and representation of small entities that would likely be affected by the bureau’s proposed regulation currently under consideration. Vitter also wanted to know if the materials that are distributed to SERs are adequate for them to provide constructive input for ...
The CFPB recently issued some guiding principles for protecting consumers as the private sector develops new faster payment systems that are aimed at reducing “pocket-to-pocket” payment times between consumers, businesses or other entities. The bureau said it wants to ensure any new payment systems are “secure, transparent, accessible, and affordable to consumers. The systems should also have robust protections when it comes to fraud and error resolution,” the agency said. While American consumers benefit from and make use of these payment systems, there remain opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce transaction costs for consumers, and lessen credit and fraud risks, according to the agency. “There is also greater opportunity for consumers to have real-time information about their account balances so they ...
Overall consumer complaints filed with the CFPB remained generally flat in the second quarter and year-over-year as of the six-month mark. But gripes about consumer loan related issues leapt 64.6 percent YOY, despite a 9.8 percent drop in the second quarter, according to the latest analysis by Inside the CFPB. The money transfer sector also showed a poor performance over both time periods tracked by Inside the CFPB, as consumer grumbling rose 18.7 percent YOY and 23.6 percent MOM. Complaints about credit cards also were up, but not as much: 12.9 percent as of the six-month period vis-à-vis last year, and a slight 2.3 percent during the second quarter of 2015. But the residential mortgage sector again did quite well ...
FDIC Issues Updated Exam Procedures for TRID. The FDIC recently published revised interagency examination procedures for the new Truth in Lending Act /Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosures rule (TRID) in an effort to help its supervisory charges better cope with the new regulatory regime. The new guidance also addresses some issues related to the bureau’s mortgage servicing rules, providing an alternative definition of the term “small servicer” for certain nonprofit entities.It also deals with aspects of the ability-to-repay rule with its qualified mortgage standard. “The examination procedures should be helpful to financial institutions seeking to better understand the areas on which the FDIC will focus as part of the examination process,” the agency said in a recent ...
A number of trade groups that represent firms involved in the securitization market are pushing for an appeal to be heard in a case that has significant implications for the MBS and ABS markets. A ruling in May by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Madden v. Midland Funding determined that nonbanks shouldn’t receive the federal preemption of state law that has been allotted to banks under the National Bank Act. “The outcome of the case would significantly impair...
Estimating where MBS prices might be headed has never been an easy game – and thanks to the debt crisis in Greece and a stock meltdown in China, it’s become a whole lot more difficult of late. But for now, analysts and market watchers are certain of one thing: MBS prices have been volatile the past two weeks thanks to a flight to quality, forcing investors everywhere to buy U.S. Treasuries. And because mortgages track Treasuries, yields have fallen and prices have increased. “The Greek crisis already has taken...
With interest rates expected to increase at some point in the future, federal regulators continue to raise concerns about mortgage-related interest rate risk for banks. The risk perspective report issued last week by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was the sixth-consecutive semi-annual report from the federal regulator to warn about the risks posed to small banks by holdings of agency mortgage-backed securities. “Material concentrations in MBS could make...
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