Mortgage Warehouse Volume at Horizon Bancorp Declines in First Quarter, TRID Remains an Issue. Horizon Bancorp announced recently that its mortgage warehouse lending efforts were down in the first quarter of 2016. The bank had $119.88 million in mortgage warehouse loans on its balance sheet at the end of the first quarter of 2016, down 17.2 percent from the previous quarter and down 33.0 percent from the first quarter of 2015.... Flagstar Boosts Originations and Income in 1Q16, Is Comfortable with TRID. Flagstar Bancorp reported an increase in originations and net income for the first quarter of 2016 with company executives noting that the bank is comfortable with the TRID mortgage disclosure requirements...

The alternatives to credit ratings mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act aimed to address contributors to the financial crisis have their own challenges, according to a new report from the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research. John Soroushian, a research analyst for policy studies at the OFR, noted that before the financial crisis, rating services had an incentive to inflate ratings for MBS, ABS and other investments to expand their business. He said rating services were “key enablers” in the creation of MBS and collateralized-debt obligations. “Without ratings, it would have been...

Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee were at odds during a hearing this week over whether there is much of a liquidity problem in the fixed-income markets today, and if so, to what extent the Dodd-Frank Act or Federal Reserve monetary policy may be responsible. Federal regulators, on the other hand, told the lawmakers that markets are functioning well enough and still evolving in a new, post-crisis environment. They suggested the thing to worry about is how much liquidity there will be in five or 10 years and how it will function. Sen. Dean Heller, R-NV, asked...

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...

Congress should consider whether additional changes to the federal financial regulatory structure are needed to reduce or better manage fragmentation and overlap in the oversight of financial institutions and activities to improve the consistency of consumer protections, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. “For example, Congress could consider ... transferring the remaining prudential regulators’ consumer protection authorities over large depository institutions to the CFPB ... among other considerations,” the report stated. One of the concerns GAO raised is that a federal financial regulatory system with multiple regulators can result in inefficient and inconsistent safety and soundness and consumer protection oversight, with negative consequences for industry players. “While Congress addressed some of our concerns through consolidating rulemaking ...

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, ordered the transfer of a case challenging risk-retention rules to the district court because the petitioner sought review of an agency action “in the wrong court.” Writing for the majority, Judge Janice Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia shifted the Loan Syndications and Trading Association’s (LSTA) challenge to the lower court for lack of statutory authorization to review the rule. “As it turns out, LSTA’s challenge on the merits will have to wait,” she wrote. Jointly prescribed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the credit risk-retention regulations required...

Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee are working on a regulatory relief bill as an alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act, many of the regulatory provisions of which have yet to be promulgated more than five years after enactment. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the committee, made the announcement and revealed some of the details earlier this week during a government relations event sponsored by the American Bankers Association in Washington, DC. “I can report...

A handful of recent and current U.S., European and international regulatory efforts “pose a serious threat to securitization as a critical source of funding for the real economy,” especially when taken together, a top securitization official told lawmakers in Washington, DC, this week. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, Richard Johns, executive director of the Structured Finance Industry Group, took on a handful of the industry’s most problematic regulatory initiatives. Among them were the liquidity ratio rules that U.S. regulators implemented in late 2014, and the new Basel III capital rules that were adopted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He also addressed...

While they are effective, the VA’s Frequently-Asked-Questions on the qualified mortgage interim final rule provide helpful guidance on certain aspects of Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loans (IRRRLs) origination as they relate to the VA QM rule, according to an analysis by the Washington, DC, law firm K&L Gates. The intricacies of IRRRL treatment under the interim final rule suggest the product may continue to be subject to ambiguities disproportionate to its limited role in the mortgage marketplace, wrote authors Kristie Kully and Eric Mitzenmacher, attorneys with the firm. VA’s interim final rule provides that all VA loans are QMs. The authors note that while most VA loans are safe harbor QMs under the rule, certain streamlined refinance loans (IRRRLs) are entitled only to a rebuttable presumption. Under the VA interim final rule, an IRRRL is deemed to have safe harbor QM status if the ...

Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee this week pushed through their version of fiscal year 2017 budget views and estimates (BVE), taking aim at government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as FHA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The minority Democrats tried to amend the broader GOP package 10 times, but each amendment went down to defeat on a party-line basis. There were no Republican amendments offered. On the issue of Fannie, Freddie and housing finance reform, Republicans on the committee said...