The CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act – dubbed TRID – is a “once in a generation transformational event for the industry,” according to Franklin Codel, executive vice president of Wells Fargo Mortgage. Even with the recently extended effective date of Oct. 3, 2015, TRID was still at the forefront of topics at a real estate conference in Miami in late June. The pending rule prompted a discussion by panelists who emphasized the magnitude of the upcoming changes. Codel said he thinks the industry is prepared but said it’s going to require strong cooperation among lenders, real estate professionals, settlement agents and consumers to get this right. “Many of the things that ...
Mortgage industry consultants at Lenders Compliance Group have received some client questions lately having to do with the seven-day waiting period under the CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule. “We know about the seven-day waiting period requirement between providing the initial disclosures and consummation,” according to a new TRID-related blog from Lenders Compliance Group that summarizes the concerns. “We need to know what criteria to use in order to determine if the consumer may waive the waiting period based on a personal emergency. And if a consumer can waive the waiting period, how is this done?” Jonathan Foxx, president and managing director at the consultancy, replied that, “For a closed-end credit transaction that is secured by the consumer’s dwelling and subject to ...
The CFPB recently took action against some credit card add-on product vendors – Affinion Group Holdings and its affiliated companies, and Intersections Inc. – accusing the companies of charging consumers for credit card add-on benefits they did not receive. When it comes to Affinion, the CFPB alleges that from about July 2010 through August 2012, the company enrolled consumers in add-on products that claimed to provide consumers with credit monitoring, credit report retrieval, or both. Consumers generally paid between $6.95 and $15.99 per month for these products, which were typically billed directly to their credit cards or deposit accounts. However, the bureau alleges that Affinion or its partner banks billed full product fees to at least 73,000 accounts while failing to provide ...
FDIC Issues Updated Exam Procedures for TRID. The FDIC recently published revised interagency examination procedures for the new Truth in Lending Act /Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosures rule (TRID) in an effort to help its supervisory charges better cope with the new regulatory regime. The new guidance also addresses some issues related to the bureau’s mortgage servicing rules, providing an alternative definition of the term “small servicer” for certain nonprofit entities.It also deals with aspects of the ability-to-repay rule with its qualified mortgage standard. “The examination procedures should be helpful to financial institutions seeking to better understand the areas on which the FDIC will focus as part of the examination process,” the agency said in a recent ...
The nation’s subservicers increased their contracts to a record high $1.350 trillion at March 31 as tougher regulations continued to play a key role in the shifting of processing chores away from depositories to nonbanks. On a sequential basis, contracts increased by 7.1 percent in the first quarter and 14.4 percent compared to March 31, 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking. Only four banks – Flagstar, Cenlar, Wells Fargo and Bank of America – were among the top 20 subservicers. Overall, at March 31, subservicers were...[Includes one data table]
The CFPB, much to the lending industry’s consternation, last week “went live” with the online publishing of more than 7,700 consumer complaint narratives addressing mortgages, bank accounts, credit cards, debt collection and other issues. Under its new final policy statement, the bureau is extending its existing practice of disclosing data on consumer complaints “to include narratives for which opt-in consumer consent is obtained and a robust personal information scrubbing standard and methodology has been applied.” The purposes of the database include providing consumers with timely and understandable information about financial products and services, and improving the functioning, transparency and efficiency of markets for such products and services. The CFPB said that adding additional information to the database, and hearing narratives ...
The CFPB last week formally proposed amending its integrated mortgage disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act – the so-called TRID – to move the rule’s effective date to October 3, 2015, which would give the industry a two-month delay. Although the TILA-RESPA final rule was published on December 31, 2013, and received widespread public and Congressional attention, the bureau said it “recently discovered that it inadvertently had not submitted the rule report to Congress as required.” The bureau’s oversight came despite having 18 months to anticipate and plan for the submission. “Immediately upon discovering its error, the bureau submitted the rule report to both Houses of Congress and the Government Accountability Office on ...
Here’s a fair lending regulatory compliance tip from the American Bankers Association’s 2015 regulatory compliance conference in Washington, DC: If you are advertising or marketing mortgage products in Spanish, you would be well advised to provide all requisite disclosures and servicing in Spanish. “As you think about how to reach people, advertising and marketing in Spanish is a good way to get to Spanish-speaking population,” said Andrew Sandler, chairman and executive partner at the BuckleySandler law firm, during a breakout session on fair lending. “But one thing regulators are intent on is, if you’re selling me in my language, then you need to be servicing me in my language too. So lenders should be careful to think about that,” the ...
The CFPB’s latest supervisory report finds illegal mortgage servicing practices are still continuing in at least corners of the marketplace. According to the report, the bureau’s examiners found at least one servicer that sent notices of intent to foreclose to borrowers already approved for trial modifications. “This dual-tracking could mislead consumers to believe the servicer had abandoned the trial modification,” the CFPB said. Bureau examiners also found at least one servicer that, because of a system error, sent notices to borrowers who were current on their loans, saying that foreclosure would be imminent. There are also still problems with illegal runarounds with loss mitigation applications, according to the report. For example, examiners found at least one servicer requesting additional documents ...
Regulators such as the CFPB are still paying attention to fair lending issues these days, but their focal point is shifting more towards greater emphasis on access to credit. “What we’re seeing is a pendulum swing from the focus of concerns being loan pricing, to the focus of concerns being loan access,” said Jeffrey Naimon, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the BuckleySandler law firm, during a webinar last week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated publication. Many wonder why it appears that access to credit remains so tight, seven years after the last financial crisis. Naimon said the CFPB ability-to-repay rule’s qualified mortgage standard could be one of the reasons. “Basically, lenders only want to make ...