Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has spent years demanding satisfaction for GSE shareholders from the Obama administration, regulators and members of Congress.
The CFPB last week initiated an administrative action against PHH Mortgage, accusing the firm of participating in a multi-million-dollar kickback scheme involving captive mortgage insurance reinsurance. The regulator said an investigation it conducted showed “that when PHH originated mortgages, it referred consumers to mortgage insurers with which it partnered. In exchange for this referral, these insurers purchased ‘reinsurance’ from PHH’s subsidiaries.” The bureau continued, “PHH took the reinsurance fees as kickbacks, in violation...
Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee last week unveiled a new data form on their website, inviting anyone who has been affected by the bureau’s work to “come forward and tell their story” via the new online feature. The GOP members said the webpage function is a part of their efforts to “hold the CFPB accountable.” Perhaps revealingly, one of the webform instructions reads, “please explain any limitation on how we might use your story in our investigation.” Even though the new function had only been operational for...
With the recent data breach at the Target national retail chain and the disclosures about the National Security Administration by whistleblower Edward Snowden still fresh in mind, House Republicans are pressing the CFPB over the integrity and security of its various database initiatives. Rep. Ed Royce, R-CA, took issue in particular with the national mortgage database project the CFPB is engaged in, along with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator of housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “I think you...
The CFPB has certainly borne the brunt of a lot of criticism since its inception, but even some of its critics say it’s not right to blast the bureau for something lawmakers are responsible for – in this case, all of the mandates from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. “I’ve been relatively critical of the CFPB, but I’m the first to say you can’t blame an agency if the issue is in the statute,” said Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, DC. “I don’t...
The CFPB issued a report last week highlighting problems such as unfair and deceptive practices in the mortgage servicing market that the bureau uncovered through its supervision program in 2013. The CFPB’s supervisory report describes several instances where servicers violated the Dodd-Frank Act’s ban on unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices. For instance, examiners found that two servicers engaged in unfair practices by failing to honor existing permanent or trial loan modifications after a servicing transfer, which resulted in...
In a development that could be quite instructive for any recipient of a CFPB civil investigative demand, the bureau has denied the petition filed by CheckSmart Financial Company this past September to modify or set aside a CID it received from the agency in 2013. First, CheckSmart argued that the bureau’s CID does not provide sufficient notice of a lawfully authorized purpose because it did not adequately describe the conduct under investigation, and thus fails to comply with relevant portions of the Dodd-Frank Act. However, citing its rules relating...
The CFPB has issued a proposed rule that would allow it to supervise “larger participant” nonbank international money-transfer providers for the first time. The CFPB’s proposed rule would subject any nonbank international money transfer provider that provides more than 1 million international money transfers annually to the bureau’s supervisory authority under the agency’s remittance rule, which took effect in October 2013. Under the proposal, bureau examiners would be able to examine larger nonbank international money-transfer providers...
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