The CFPB announced that it will hold a day-long symposium, “Building a Bridge to Credit Visibility,” to explore challenges many consumers face in getting credit. This event will take place on Sept. 17 in the CFPB’s Washington, DC, headquarters, and will be streamed live. The CFPB said the symposium “will convene a diverse set of stakeholders to explore challenges in overcoming barriers to expand fair, equitable, and non-discriminatory access to credit [Includes three briefs] ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders faced another hurdle last week when the Eighth Circuit Court ruled that the Treasury sweep of GSE profits was legal. In fact, in the 14-page ruling, filed on Aug. 23, the judge said, “This shareholder lawsuit crashes into a roadblock before it can get started,” and stated that the Federal Housing Finance Agency did not exceed its conservatorship powers, as the plaintiffs argued. “Congress, intentionally or otherwise, may have created a monster by handing an agency breathtakingly broad powers and insulating the exercise of those powers from judicial review. Even so, clear statutory text dictates the outcome,” said Judge David Stras in Saxton vs. the FHFA.

It has been more than three years since FHA introduced a new streamlined process of identifying loan defects and their severity to minimize or avoid enforcement action and hefty penalties under the False Claims Act. Despite calls by the mortgage industry to improve and clarify the process – the Single-Family Loan Quality Assessment methodology or “defect taxonomy” – the FHA has yet to make a move to meet industry demands for more detailed defect taxonomy. Contacted for an update on the defect taxonomy, a Housing and Urban Development spokesperson said simply, “Nothing to report on this.” An outgrowth of lender concern over the government’s indiscriminate use of the FCA to prosecute mortgage fraud and recover FHA losses, the defect taxonomy establishes nine categories of loan defects in loans it endorses. The nine defect categories replaced the 99 loan defect codes that were ...

Michael Bright Clears First Hurdle to Becoming President of GNMA. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs this week voted to confirm Michael Bright as president of Ginnie Mae. Bright’s confirmation is broadly positive for housing, said Jaret Seiberg, financial services and housing policy analyst for Cowen Washington Research Group. Bright is a former staffer for Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, and has a history of working well with Republicans and Democrats, said Seiberg. In addition, he has worked closely with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in cracking down on loan churning, he added. The Mortgage Bankers Association welcomed the news. “Mr. Bright would bring significant experience within the mortgage industry and on Capitol Hill to the role of Ginnie Mae president,” said Bill Kilmer, the group’s chief lobbyist. “He has demonstrated a commitment to bipartisan solutions regarding complex ...

CFPB Announces HMDA File Format Verification Tool and New 2017 Dataset. The CFPB earlier this month released the 2018 File Format Verification Tool (FFVT) which tests whether HMDA reporters’ files meet certain formatting requirements needed to submit data to the HMDA platform. Specifically, the FFVT will test whether the file is pipe-delimited, has the proper number of data fields, and has data fields formatting as integers, where necessary ... [Includes three briefs]

All 49 Democratic senators last week signed a letter to Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, urging him to continue protecting servicemembers and their families under the Military Lending Act. The letter follows reports that Mulvaney plans to suspend examining lenders for MLA compliance. The senators called on Mulvaney not to halt military lending checks or take steps that would potentially harm servicemembers and their families. “The CFPB should not be abandoning ...

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors recently announced that all states and U.S. territories now use a single, common exam to assess mortgage loan originators. In the past, a mortgage license candidate would need to take the national exam and a separate test for each state license. Now, MLOs only need take a national test – the National SAFE MLO Test with Uniform State Content – to hold a license. State regulators started to test a uniform national exam five years ago ...

The CFPB recently joined with a group of foreign regulators to cooperate on the regulation of fintech, with the aim to facilitate responsible cross-border experimentation of new ideas. The group proposed to create the Global Financial Innovation Network to help new technology grow in a more relaxed regulatory environment worldwide. “The network will seek to provide a more efficient way for innovative firms to interact with regulators, helping them navigate ...

A federal court in Texas recently refused for the second time to delay the compliance date of the CFPB’s payday lending rule, which generally leaves the agency only one option to delay the date: through notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures. “There is a significant likelihood that the bureau might extend the compliance deadline” through rulemaking, said Quyen Truong, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. Two payday lending trade groups earlier this year ...

The CFPB recently imposed a $69 million judgement against two individuals and a group of payday lending entities controlled by them for cash-grab scams, although most of it will be waived. This is the seventh enforcement action brought by the CFPB so far this year, and also the third involving payday lenders. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri Western Division recently entered an order effectuating a settlement between the CFPB ...