It looks like some of the biggest mortgage lenders in the nation will be closing their loans themselves largely without closing agents, once the CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule kicks in Aug. 1, 2015, one top vendor representative revealed recently. And that might put the big banks at a competitive advantage vis-à-vis their nonbank rivals. “Because this is a paradigm shift, and because the liability is staying on the lender side – both in terms of the accuracy of the disclosure and in the timing – we’ve heard some of the bigger lenders are going to close the loans themselves instead of using settlement agents,” John Vong, CEO of ComplianceEase, told Inside the CFPB recently. “For some of the banks, they have already ...

The CFPB’s latest Supervisory Highlights report identified a number of issues observed during examinations related to mortgage origination, fair lending, consumer reporting, debt collection, and deposits. “In one or more examinations, examiners found that branch managers were loan originators and owners of related marketing services entities,” the report said. Examiners “found instances of improperly allocated expenses on branch income statements which resulted in marketing services entities receiving income based on the profitability of retail loans originated by branch managers. Consequently, branch managers, as owners of the marketing services entities, received compensation based on the terms of transactions originated by the branch managers themselves.” In these cases, bureau examiners directed that compensation to loan originators based on a term of a ...

The CFPB issued a formal notice and request for information on how the credit card market is functioning and the effect credit card protections are having on both issuers and consumers. As per the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act, the CFPB is required to conduct a review of the consumer credit market every two years. Among its focal points, the bureau wants to know how the terms and conditions of credit card agreements have changed since it conducted its review of the credit card market two years ago. “The bureau is looking to see how card issuers may have changed their pricing, marketing, underwriting, or other practices and whether those changes have benefited or harmed consumers,” the ...

CFPB Updates TRID Documentation. Last week, the CFPB put out some updates to the implementation materials for its integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The updated material lines up with the rule that was published Feb. 19, 2015, that modifies the 2013 TILA/RESPA integrated disclosure rule (TRID). This rule extends the timing requirement for revised disclosures when consumers lock a rate or extend a rate lock after the Loan Estimate is provided and permits certain language related to construction loans for transactions involving new construction on the LE. Additionally, the bureau is making non-substantive corrections, including citation and cross-reference updates and wording changes for clarification purposes, to various provisions of ...

Loan Modification Trial Payment Plans for Forward Mortgages. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced requirements for trial plan duration, required signatures, and reporting for trial payment-plan agreements, and the conditions under which FHA deems a TPP to have failed.Lenders must implement the requirements in Mortgagee Letter 2015-07 for all TPPs offered to borrowers on or after June 1, 2015. FHA Publishes Additional Sections of HUD Single-Family Policy Handbook. The FHA has published additional sections for the SF Handbook, including the following: Doing Business with FHA – Lenders and Mortgagees Doing Business with FHA – Other participants in FHA Transactions – Appraisers; Quality Control, Oversight and Compliance – Lenders and Mortgagees; Quality Control Oversight, and Compliance – Other Participants in FHA Transactions – Appraisers ...

While Wall Street professionals spent the run-up to this week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee wondering whether the Fed would lose its “patience” regarding a future increase in interest rates, the FOMC continued its present course on MBS investment. “The committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency MBS in agency MBS and of rolling over maturing ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture-Rural Housing Service has proposed to revise regulations for the single-family housing guaranteed loan program pertaining to qualified-mortgage (QM) requirements, refinancing, principal reduction and lender indemnification. The deadline for comments is May 4, 2015.The RHS is proposing to amend its regulations to indicate that a loan with an RHS guarantee is a qualified mortgage if it meets certain requirements set by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB published a QM rule, which became effective on Jan. 10, 2014. Among other things, the rule requires creditors to make a reasonable, good faith determination of a borrower’s ability to repay the mortgage loan. In addition, the rule establishes a safe harbor from liability for transactions that meet the QM requirements or, in certain cases, a rebuttable presumption of ...

More than a year after standards for qualified mortgages took effect, a number of lenders are willing to offer non-QMs, but production has been concentrated on affluent borrowers. Lenders seem less willing to offer non-QMs to borrowers with lower credit scores or higher loan-to-value ratios. For the past year, Nationstar Mortgage has been working toward offering a non-QM refinance product. The loan would target non-agency borrowers in the nonbank’s large servicing ...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposal to significantly expand the regulatory requirements related to successors in interest poses legal risks, threatens personal privacy and could foster instances of fraud, mortgage industry officials said. The provisions related to successors in interest are part of a package of proposed amendments to the bureau’s 2013 mortgage rules under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act ...

Commercial banks and thrifts reported another decline in their ABS holdings during the fourth quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of call-report data. In aggregate, banks and thrifts held $159.22 billion of ABS in their held-to-maturity and available-for-sale retained portfolios as of the end of last year. That was the industry’s lowest level of ABS investment since the middle of 2012, and it represented a 3.1 percent drop from a revised third-quarter total of $164.35 billion. The biggest component in the aggregate portfolio was...[Includes two data charts]