Another CFPB Official Heads for the Private Sector. CFPB Enforcement Attorney Manuel Alvarez has been hired away by Affirm, a young financial services company based in San Francisco, to be its first chief compliance officer and general counsel. In his new role at Affirm, Alvarez will oversee and manage the company’s regulatory compliance program and related actives to prevent illegal, unfair or deceptive conduct. He will also take charge of the firm’s working relationships with regulators and Affirm’s service providers. “Consumers often don’t understand the fees or interest they pay on a revolving account. That has to change,” said Alvarez. “Affirm’s commitment to delivering honest and transparent financial products totally aligns with my long-standing commitment to consumer protection.” Alvarez was ...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently proposed a significant expansion of the loan features lenders would need to report under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The CFPB said the new data will help gauge whether regulations meant to limit originations of “risky mortgage products” have been effective. The federal regulator is seeking new disclosures regarding credit scores, debt-to-income ratios, qualified mortgage status and loan type, among many ...

The risk-retention standard federal regulators are leaning toward establishing isn’t what was intended under the Dodd-Frank Act, according to one of the main authors of the DFA. Barney Frank, a former Democrat congressman from Massachusetts, said aligning the definition for qualified mortgages with the definition for qualified residential mortgages would be a “grave error.” The DFA required federal regulators to establish standards for QRMs ...

The FHA’s widespread reduction in loan limits for 2014 has had a mixed impact on production levels so far this year, according to a new Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA endorsement data. Through the first four months of 2014, FHA endorsements were down 55.6 percent from the same period last year. But in counties where loan limits were lowered, FHA production was down 57.5 percent from early 2013. In the relatively few counties where loan limits actually increased in 2014, FHA endorsements were also down from a year ago, but by a less severe 47.4 percent. The biggest decline in endorsements has been in refinances, especially FHA-to-FHA refinances. In areas with lowered loan limits, production of these loans has plummeted 87.0 percent, and even areas with raised loan limits saw an 81.1 percent drop in streamlined refis. Purchase-mortgage originations have taken less of a ...

JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have both paid major settlements regarding FHA lending, and both have curtailed their participation in the program, according to a new analysis of Ginnie Mae data by Inside FHA Lending. During the first six months of 2013, Chase accounted for 11.8 percent of the FHA mortgages in newly issued Ginnie mortgage-backed securities. During the first half of 2014, its volume of FHA loans in Ginnie pools was down 75.8 percent from the same period last year, and its share of the market sank more than half, to just 5.1 percent. Jamie Dimon, Chase’s president and CEO, recently questioned why the bank should stay in the FHA business when legal costs are so high. The Ginnie data show it ... [1 chart]

Mortgage lenders face a heftier Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting load under a proposed rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would implement a number of changes mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act – and then some. The bureau views implementation of the Dodd-Frank changes as an opportunity to improve the data collected under HMDA, ease some reporting burden and modernize how the data are collected and reported, the agency said. The CFPB proposed...

Non-depository institutions aren’t letting a relatively stagnant mortgage servicing business stop them from continuing to build market share, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking of mortgage servicers at the midway point in 2014. Nonbanks that ranked among the top 30 servicers as of the end of the second quarter serviced an estimated $1.792 trillion of home mortgages, an increase of 12.4 percent over the past year. Depository institutions serviced considerably more – $5.142 trillion – but their aggregate portfolio was down 7.8 percent from the midway point in 2013. The shift to nonbank servicing from the first quarter was...[Includes two data charts]

Despite certain “unique” circumstances under which principal might be reduced on a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan, the government-sponsored enterprises’ blanket prohibition on principal reduction remains in place, according to the GSEs’ regulator. The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it remains true to its long-standing policy despite a recent change in management and in the face of continued calls by progressive groups for the FHFA to embrace the use of principal reduction on GSE-backed loans in foreclosure mitigation. “As outlined in FHFA’s 2014 Strategic Plan for the Conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHFA is...

The White House isn’t quite ready to pack it in on housing finance reform legislation this year, at least in the Senate, even as policymakers look ahead to take up the issue anew next year, say industry observers. The industry at large has all but written off the prospects of advancing a GSE reform bill in the 113th Congress following the bare minimum passage out of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee of S. 1217 by the committee’s chairman and ranking member Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID.

Black Knight Financial Services – with a little help from its friends at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage – has repurposed some of its existing technology and combined it with some fresh capabilities to help lenders cope with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s TILA/RESPA integrated disclosure rule. It also will enable mortgage lenders to automate the numerous multi-party processes required to close a loan these days, the company said. The new ...