More than 250 members of the House of Representatives have signed onto a letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, urging he institute a “grace period” of enforcement with the bureau’s pending integrated disclosure rule that takes effect Aug. 1, 2015. The lawmakers have joined the mortgage lending industry in calling for an ease on tight enforcement of the TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule from the Aug. 1 effective date through the end of the year. “[T]his complicated and extensive rule is likely to cause challenges during implementation, which is currently scheduled for Aug. 1, 2015, that could negatively impact consumers,” said the lawmakers. “As you know, the housing market is highly seasonal, with August, September and October ...

Yet another industry concern about the CFPB’s pending TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule has emerged. Technology vendor eLynx, based in Cincinnati, has determined that many lenders will be relying at least in part on manually entered data to create the CFPB-mandated Closing Disclosure (CD) after the Aug. 1, 2015, implementation of the new rule. According to the vendor, lenders are concerned that manual data re-entry will be a major cause of disclosure mistakes when the agency’s TRID rule takes effect. eLynx conducted a survey of the hundreds of lenders and settlement professionals currently using its services. “The results are alarming,” the company said. “Only 6 percent have a fully automated process for collecting property-related data from settlement service providers (SSPs).” ...

The latest wave in the tsunami of rulemakings from the CFPB is the pending integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. And just the timing aspects related to providing the consumer the loan estimate and the closing disclosure could cause havoc, a top industry attorney warned recently. According to Phillip Schulman, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the K&L Gates law firm, the biggest problem with the TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule has to do with the timing requirements. “You have to give the loan estimate to the borrower within three business days of receiving the application, and no sooner than seven days before consummation or closing of the ...

The pending TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule from the CFPB is going to raise the risk of losses for investors in U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service. Currently, as Moody’s points out, RMBS trusts are liable for lender errors in calculating the finance charge, the annual percentage rate (APR) and certain other disclosures required by the Truth in Lending Act. However, they are not liable for errors on itemized settlement charges and other disclosures required by the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. Further, under the current regime, TILA and RESPA each require lenders to deliver both an initial and a final disclosure to consumers. “Whether an assignee can be liable for lender errors ...

A number of industry groups representing a broad array of financial services providers took advantage of the CFPB’s latest inquiry about consumer complaint information to express their concerns with the bureau’s possible expansions of its related database. Earlier this year, the bureau issued a formal request for information about the Consumer Complaint Database, asking for “input from the public on the potential collection and sharing of consumer compliments about providers of consumer financial products and services and more information about a company’s complaint handling.” The bureau specifically asked for input on two key points, the first of which was ranking or otherwise sorting service providers by certain metrics related to the complaints they receive, allowing complainants to rate service providers’ ...

Consumer complaints about credit reporting pretty much remained flat in the first quarter of 2015 from the fourth quarter of 2014 – up a scant 0.5 percent during that period – but dropped 11.0 percent overall from year-ago levels, a notable decline. An analysis of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database by Inside the CFPB found that each of the big three credit reporting firms – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – saw declines year over year. Experian turned in the best performance of the three, however, seeing a drop of 18.4 percent. TransUnion was the only one of the big three to see a decline in both periods.Among specific complaints, “incorrect information” continues to represent the lion’s share of negative consumer feedback ... [with exclusive data chart]

The CFPB plans to release its long-awaited final rule to implement Dodd-Frank Act amendments to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act in late summer, according to the bureau’s Spring 2015 rulemaking agenda, which was released late last month. “The proposal would help align the law with existing industry standards for collecting data on mortgage loans and applications,” said the agency. “It would also improve HMDA’s effectiveness through changes to institutional and transactional coverage, modifications of reporting requirements, and clarifications of existing regulatory provisions. We expect to release a final rule in late summer.” Elsewhere, the CFPB continues to be steadfast on the Aug. 1, 2015, effective date for its TILA/ RESPA integrated disclosure rule, and its latest rulemaking agenda betrays no ...

Public Silent on Information Collection Plans to Survey Consumers, Conduct Cognitive Research. More than one week after the public comment period closed on two “generic information collection plans” from the CFPB, there was not a single public comment submitted for the official record, Inside the CFPB discovered when searching the U.S. government’s regulation.gov website. The first GICP had to do with surveys using the Consumer Credit Panel. In order to improve its understanding of how consumers engage with financial markets, the CFPB uses this CCP, a proprietary sample dataset from one of the national credit reporting agencies, as a framework to survey people about their experiences in consumer credit markets. The sample includes approximately 5 million de-identified credit records representing ...

Morningstar Credit Ratings may increase its presence in the residential MBS market after rating its first re-securitization last week and revising its rating criteria for new non-agency MBS. The push follows Morningstar’s initial effort to rate non-agency MBS in 2012, which didn’t generate any business. The company has rated commercial MBS and single-family rental securities. Last week, the rating service published...

Banks and thrifts held $155.55 billion of non-mortgage ABS on their books as of the end of March, a 2.3 percent decline from the previous quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of call-report data. The first-quarter figures mark the fifth straight quarterly decline in bank ABS holdings, which peaked at $173.80 billion at the end of 2013. Bank ABS holdings were down 9.9 percent from the first quarter of last year. Almost every ABS category was...[Includes two data tables]