Last month, the CFPB took its first enforcement action against a payday lender by ordering Cash America International Inc. to refund up to $14 million to consumers for robo-signing court documents in debt collection lawsuits and for illegally overcharging service members and their families. The publicly traded financial services company headquartered in Ft. Worth, TX, also was compelled to pay a $5 million fine for the violations and for destroying records in advance of the bureau’s examination. In terms of specific...

The CFPB and the payday lending industry continue to lock horns over the bureau’s controversial white paper on payday and deposit advance loans, most recently with the bureau rejecting “in its entirety” an appeal from the Community Financial Services Association, national payday lending trade group, which is seeking a retraction of the white paper. Back in April, the bureau put out the white paper, which was based on a study it did of 15 million storefront payday loans and 100,000 accounts eligible for deposit advances. Among its findings...

Certain online payday lenders and other businesses deemed to present risks to consumers could find themselves banned from the Automatic Clearing House network, thanks to increased scrutiny from the CFPB and other authorities. Speaking before the Clearing House Annual Conference late last month, CFPB Director Richard Cordray invoked the bureau’s mandate to subject nonbank entities to the same level of regulatory scrutiny as banking institutions. “We now have the ability to examine participants in both the bank and nonbank segments of...

Members of the House Financial Service Committee are continuing to give the CFPB a hard time over its recent auto fair-lending guidance, which quickly got the industry up in arms. Most recently, in a Nov. 15 letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, challenged the CFPB for failing to study how a shift to flat-fee compensation for dealers could influence the cost of credit to borrowers, especially low‐ and moderate‐income borrowers. “It is imperative that the bureau take the opportunity to conduct an...

Rohit Chopra, CFPB assistant director and student-loan ombudsman, hinted recently that borrower enrollment in repayment programs by servicers might be a likely focus of bureau examinations and investigations once the agency’s student-loan servicer “larger participant” rule is finalized. In comments before the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Chopra noted some similarities between problems in the mortgage market and the student-loan market – including breakdowns in the servicing sector. “The CFPB has...

Bureau Faults Financial Services Providers Over Educational Expenditures. A new study from the CFPB claims that the financial services industry spends 25 times as much money annually on marketing financial products and services to consumers each year than on financial education – $17 billion versus $670 million, respectively. According to the bureau’s modeling methodology, that shakes out to about $54 on marketing versus $2 on financial education per person per year. Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers...

The once deadlocked, but now all-but-certain, confirmation of Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, to be the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency has left industry observers uncertain as to the continued policy direction of the FHFA.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week announced 2014 conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that are unchanged from those currently in place, but it’s unclear whether the agency still intends to direct the government-sponsored enterprises to set lower limits. The agency cited statutory requirements of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 that require changes in the baseline loan limit, $417,000, based on the movement of house prices. Al-though house prices have risen over the past year, the FHFA said, they still haven’t made up all the decline since the housing market tanked in 2007. In the third quarter of 2013, the FHFA house price index was...

After a few weeks of drought in the servicing auction market, a handful of new portfolios are hitting the circuit as sellers try to bolster earnings before year-end. “Buyers haven’t had much new to look at lately, but that’s changing,” said Tom Piercy, managing member of Interactive Mortgage Advisors, Denver. “I think sellers are a little concerned about the new origination forecast for next year from the [Mortgage Bankers Association] and they are thinking they should convert some of their assets to cash.” The MBA last month projected...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency needs to be more hands-on and engaged with additional resources to best oversee Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks, according to the agency’s inspector general. In its semi-annual report to Congress, the FHFA IG noted “recurring oversight issues that policymakers may want to consider as part of reforming the secondary mortgage market.” “The recent housing crisis has shown...