Although federal regulators this week gave the industry more time to comment on their controversial proposal on risk retention in non-agency MBS and ABS transactions, some industry experts have already suggested that the concept fails to address its fundamental purpose of strengthening deal quality by aligning the interests of securitizers and investors. Risk retention is an intellectually appealing idea, but it’s not clear that it provides...

Bank executives expect it will be a tall order for their firms to address the various tax implications of the Dodd-Frank Act, as well as the Basel III liquidity standards, particularly with regard to securitizations, according to a recent survey by audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG. KPMG reported that 48 percent of respondents said their firms were still trying to figure out the tax implications of Dodd-Frank and Basel III, while 49 percent said...

Servicers must achieve “quality right-party contact” (QRPC) with borrowers as a means of determining a delinquent homeowner’s willingness and ability to pay his mortgage under new standards Fannie Mae has laid out regarding the management of loans in danger of default.Fannie’s issuance of servicing standards this week is in compliance with the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Servicing Alignment Initiative announced in late April to establish consistent mortgage loan servicing and management requirements for servicers acting on behalf of Fannie and Freddie Mac.

The watchdog agency charged with overseeing the regulator of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks said it has numerous audits and evaluations of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in the pipeline.According to two separate but related reports by the Office of the Inspector General of the FHFA issued late last month, the FHFA-OIG is in the midst of a total of 17 ongoing or planned reviews of the Finance Agency.

The Congressional Budget Office is recommending changes in how the government accounts for programs that dominate the residential mortgage market, which could make the FHA program less at-tractive, politically, and shape the post-Fannie/Freddie market. In a pair of recent reports, the CBO said the government should adopt fair-value accounting for assessing the cost of the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the federal budget. Congress currently uses special rules mandated by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 in creating annual budgets for the FHA, while the government-sponsored enterprises are...

Weichert Financial/Mortgage Access Corp., an agency/jumbo mortgage lender in 43 states, reached a settlement with the banking regulators of 10 states after a multi-state examination found numerous compliance and internal control deficiencies, including the use of an “interstate lending desk” to facilitate the origination or completion of mortgage applications by originators that were not licensed in the appropriate jurisdictions. “The multi-state mortgage examination program was initiated to enhance consumer protection, foster a culture of compliance within the industry, and hold...

Consumer and civil rights groups are up in arms over the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s recent interpretation of preemption under the Dodd-Frank Act, which would allow the OCC to generally retain its existing preemption regulations. The uproar stemmed from a letter the OCC sent to certain members of Congress on May 12 lay-ing out the agency’s views of its preemption powers under the new preemption provisions of Title X of the Dodd-Frank Act. Those views have been embodied in a proposed OCC rulemaking implementing several DFA provisions, including...

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued a proposed rule that features some important changes to national bank preemption and the agency’s visitorial authority in the wake of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. But industry legal experts say it’s too soon to tell what kind of effect the rule might have on the mortgage lending market or whether it may prompt charter movement among financial institutions...

In an unusual convergence, consumer advocacy groups have joined with mortgage lending and real estate interests to warn federal regulators about a host of negative consequences with their interagency proposed rulemaking to implement the risk retention and “qualified residential mortgage” provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act...

Mortgage lenders have a number of questions about the two new prototype disclosure forms circulated for public comment recently by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but none of the issues appears to be a deal-breaker...