As part of the growing attention the CFPB is paying these days to the marketing relationships between financial institutions and colleges and universities, the CFPB released for public comment a draft Safe Student Account Scorecard that offers information to institutions of higher learning when soliciting agreements from financial institutions to market safe and affordable financial accounts for their students.“The scorecard builds on prior work by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and is designed to help colleges evaluate the costs and benefits to students of a financial product based on information about its features and how it is marketed,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The bureau is seeking public input on the scorecard, which highlights four areas for schools to ...
Obama Vows Vetoes to Dodd-Frank Changes. President Barack Obama touted the Dodd-Frank Act during his recent State of the Union speech as well as the growth of the CFPB, and threatened a veto should the Republican-controlled Congress pass any additional fixes to Dodd-Frank. “Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts, and a new consumer watchdog to protect us from predatory lending and abusive credit card practices,” Obama said. “We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got a system to fix. And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of ...
A total of $185.32 billion of non-mortgage ABS were issued in 2014, the highest annual production level for the market since 2007, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. ABS issuance was up 12.0 percent from the prior year, with solid gains in three of the market’s key sectors: auto finance, credit cards and business loans. The weakest link was the student loan ABS market, where annual production fell 25.4 percent from 2013 and slipped to its lowest level since 1999. Vehicle finance deals were...[Includes two data charts]
Issuers of auto ABS are loosening underwriting standards and delinquencies on subprime auto loans are increasing, but industry analysts suggest that there is little cause for concern. Performance remains much stronger than the delinquencies seen during the financial crisis and issuers are unlikely to loosen underwriting to the extent seen in the run-up to 2008. For independent finance companies, 60+ delinquencies increased by 13.7 percent in the past year, from 1.82 percent in the third quarter of 2013 to 2.07 percent in the third quarter of 2014, according to the latest data from Experian Automotive. Independent finance companies focus primarily on lending to subprime borrowers, and their delinquency trends outpaced any increase in delinquencies for other types of lenders that lend primarily to prime borrowers. Peter McNally, a vice president and senior analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said...
The CFPB is likely to throw its weight around just as much this year as it did last year, only its focus and intensity will be more diverse in terms of the industries that will be affected. Back in 2014, much of the regulatory concern among lenders had to do with the bureau’s ability-to-repay rule with its qualified mortgage standard, and to lesser extents its rules on mortgage servicing and loan originator compensation. Make no mistake. The mortgage industry is still in the CFPB’s crosshairs. The biggest payload to be delivered in this regard in 2015 is the long-awaited and much discussed integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. That rule ...
The residential mortgage space was the only sector in the large financial services universe to see a year-over-year decline in consumer complaints filed with the CFPB, according to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB. The positive performance, a drop of 14.5 percent, is most likely due to the continued recovery in the overall economy as well as the housing market, which is reducing the stresses that produce delinquencies, defaults and foreclosures, which are associated with high levels of borrower gripes.A lesser contributing factor to consumer criticisms in the “resi” space could be the steep drop-off in mortgage originations over the last year, which could be reducing the overall pool from which origination-related belly-aching originates. [With two exclusive charts] ...
Loopholes in the current Military Lending Act rules are allowing lenders to offer high-cost consumer loans to military families by skirting the 36 percent rate cap – in some cases, charging more than 300 percent – as well as sticking them with excessive fees for the products they use, according to recent comments and a report by the CFPB. The MLA is implemented by the Department of Defense, and is enforced by the bureau and other federal regulators. The CFPB filed a comment letter in support of the DOD’s recent proposal to broaden the scope of the MLA rules to cover deposit advance products, and more types of payday, auto title and installment loans. Currently, the MLA rules provide service members and ...
The strong growth in issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities seen since 2010 stumbled in 2014, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Some $9.79 billion in jumbo MBS were issued last year, down 25.4 percent from activity in 2013. Issuance has been constrained by bank portfolio demand for jumbo mortgages. The spike in interest rates in 2013 led to nine months of very low issuance. Rates have since fallen and a number of new jumbo MBS issuers have entered the market, but quarterly volume has struggled to reach the levels seen in early 2013. Those looking for a silver lining could...[Includes one data chart]
In another example of multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional legal action, the CFPB and Florida’s Attorney General Office brought an enforcement against two student debt-relief companies accused of tricking borrowers into paying upfront fees for federal loan benefits. “We allege that both companies exploited vulnerable student loan borrowers, made false promises about their debt-relief services, and charged illegal upfront fees,” said CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Rohit Chopra. The bureau and the Florida AG shut down Tampa-based student loan debt-relief company College Education Services, and its owners, Marcia Elena Vargas and Frank Liz, for allegedly scamming students into paying upfront fees for student loan debt consolidation, loan forgiveness, and relief from garnishments, services that were never provided or not performed as promised, according to ...
The CFPB sued a Dallas-based company, Union Workers Credit Services, for allegedly deceiving consumers into paying fees to sign up for what it advertises to be a general-use credit card that actually can only be used to buy products from the company. “The business model for Union Workers Credit Services is built on duping consumers into signing up for a sham credit card,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Hundreds of thousands of people, including a great many union members who were specially targeted, have been tricked into spending millions of dollars for a so-called credit card that can really only be used to buy the company’s own products, ” he added. “From the misleading photos of nurses and firemen on ...