The regulatory workload required of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other federal banking regulators is moving forward sporadically, with a number of proposals yet to be released before the January 2013 deadline imposed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The industry concern is that regulators will find themselves forced into a massive document dump at the end of the year, with mortgage lenders then having to scramble in dozens of directions at the same time in an attempt...
The forthcoming combined Truth in Lending Act and Good Faith Estimate disclosure form and related rule pending at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is at the top of the list of greatest compliance concerns of mortgage lenders, according to the fourth annual compliance survey by QuestSoft, a provider of compliance software and services to the mortgage industry. Of the 426 lenders that were surveyed on their level of anxiety for regulatory changes, a whopping 81 percent identified this CFPB project as at least a medium (33 percent) or a high (48 percent) concern...
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Comments Wanted on Mortgage-Related Rules. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is asking for public comment on currently approved information collections associated with certain recently published interim final rules having to do with mortgage lending. One such rule has to do with the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act (Regulation G) 12 CFR Part 1007.“The information collection will improve the flow of information to and between regulators; provide accountability and ...
Bank of America and the Department of Justice recently agreed to the largest residential fair lending settlement in history – for $335 million. The DOJ claimed that Countrywide Financial allowed pricing discrimination against minority borrowers as well as unchecked steering to subprime loans. The settlement, which is subject to court approval, will mark the first time that the DOJ has obtained relief for borrowers who were steered into loans based on race or national origin. The DOJ said the practice “systematically placed borrowers of color into subprime mortgage loan products while placing non-Hispanic white borrowers with similar creditworthiness in prime loans.” ...
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Now Accepting Mortgage Complaints. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began accepting mortgage complaints from consumers through its websitefs home page, as of Dec. 1, 2011. To file a complaint, a consumer has to describe what happened and what would be a fair resolution. The consumer is presented with a menu of options and has to specify the type of mortgage involved (conventional fixed-rate, FHA, etc.) as well as the part of the mortgage process involved that is the source of the complaint. Once the complaint is filed, the relevant company will be notified, and the consumer will be provided a tracking number.
The regulatory burden of the Dodd-Frank Act creates pressure on community banks to hire additional compliance staff instead of customer-facing staff, reducing resources that could be directly applied to serving a bank’s customers, resulting in fewer mortgages getting made, slower job growth and a weaker economy, according to Steve Wilson, the American Bankers Association’s immediate past chairman. The Dodd-Frank provisions he cited as particularly troubling for community banks include risk retention, higher capital requirements, narrower qualifications for capital, and doubling the size of the deposit insurance fund – taking as much as $50 billion out of the earnings and capital of the industry in the process. “The Dodd-Frank Act also requires 20 new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting obligations,” Wilson said in a speech last week. “These and other reporting requirements will add considerable compliance costs to every bank’s bottom line.”
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