Mortgage lenders say they need another year, at least, to prepare for all the new requirements they will confront under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s revised Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule. One of the biggest problems is that the industry is waiting for multiple actions to be completed by the bureau before it can fully implement the new changes and test compliance systems, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a comment letter filed with the CFPB last week. Back in April, the bureau proposed...

The American Bankers Association’s letter to Secretary Treasury Steve Mnuchin also detailed a handful of key changes it said the CFPB should make to its controversial Truth-in-Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule. First, the bureau ought to revise the TRID tolerances. Currently, the rule requires creditors to observe closing cost tolerances that prohibit fees from increasing beyond initial disclosures by specific amounts. “TRID’s cost tolerance system is extremely convoluted, operating under a three-prong tolerance system that contains uncertain exemptions and rules for corrections,” the trade group said. “ABA believes that the current tolerance system should be entirely eliminated and replaced with a single tolerance standard of 10 percent, with more focused applicability.”Under this proposal, a ...

The Mortgage Bankers Association called on the CFPB to delay the Jan. 1, 2018, effective date for its new and expanded data collection and reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.“Considering the fact that much remains to be done by the CFPB, including rules and deliverables, MBA respectfully urges the bureau to delay these amendments and the final rule for at least one year in order to provide the bureau and HMDA reporters with sufficient time to complete, implement and test their data collection and reporting processes,” the trade group said in a comment letter to the agency. The additional time “will allow several necessary actions and relevant materials to be delivered by the bureau in time for ...

Mortgage lenders in the U.S. seem to be in a better frame of mind when it comes to their ability to comply with new regulations and to operate in the post-election environment, according to a study from Lenders One, a cooperative of independent mortgage bankers, correspondent lenders and suppliers of mortgage products and services. “Lenders are ready for new regulatory requirements, such as updates to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, with two-thirds (65 percent) indicating they are very prepared for HMDA changes,” Lenders One said. However, the biggest HMDA compliance challenge for lenders involves the additional resources needed to report transactional data, such as home equity lines of credit and dwelling-secured loans for apartments, the survey found. “While lenders are ...

The cost of complying with the plethora of mortgage regulations, including the high-profile rules promulgated by the CFPB, consume nearly a quarter of lenders’ operating revenue and hurt both sellers and buyers with extended closing delays. Those were some of the chief findings of a survey performed by mortgage market research expert Tom Lamalfa, president of TSL Consulting, Cleveland Heights, OH, at the Mortgage Bankers Association National Secondary Market Conference in May. The results were distributed to MBA members last week via email. Among the questions posed to survey participants was, “Compliance costs consume about what percentage of your total operating expenses?” Of the 31 executives who responded, the average was 21.4 percent of total operating expenses. “The ranges were ...

Oral arguments in PHH Corp. et al. v CFPB were recently held by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and reactions to the proceedings were all over the map, suggesting to some that the event functioned like a legal Rorschach test. FBR Capital Markets & Co. analyst Edward Mills said in a client note he thinks the case is bound for the U.S. Supreme Court, probably sometime next year. “Given the makeup of the en banc panel [mostly Democrat appointees], we would give a bias to the previous ruling to be overturned,” Mills said. “Despite the headlines from the ruling, we fully expect that either party will appeal the case to the Supreme Court, which ...

There’s plenty of talk in mortgage technology circles of e-mortgages, re-imagining the loan origination process and digitizing back-office operations, but what about the regulatory, supervisory and examination front? During a recent interview with Inside Mortgage Trends, Sharif Mahdavian, vice president of national sales at ComplianceEase, a leading industry vendor, revealed that regulators are increasingly moving to an “e-examination” phase to augment their current level of ...

Almost every week it seems like a lender launches a digital mortgage process allowing for loan applications to be received and processed online effortlessly and efficiently. However, according to a recent survey of lenders, a number of barriers stand in the way of digital mortgages. Lenders cited various technology issues, costs and difficulties getting loan officers to change behavior as barriers to digitizing the mortgage process. Some 73 lenders participated in the survey administered by the Strategic Mortgage Finance Group earlier this year. The top barrier to digital mortgage offerings was...

False Claims Act enforcement against FHA lenders appears to have slowed with no new cases being filed by the Department of Justice or referred by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general for nearly a year. Neither agency has gone after any lender for alleged False Claims Act violations since May of last year when the Department of Justice intervened in an FCA case brought by a whistleblower against Guild Mortgage, an FHA direct endorsement lender. The complaint alleged that San Diego-based Guild Mortgage knowingly approved loans that violated FHA rules while falsely certifying compliance with those rules. The alleged violations occurred between 2006 and 2011, resulting in “tens of millions of dollars” in losses to HUD. The case is pending in federal district court in Washington, DC. Indications are the FCA cases involving FHA lenders have ...

CFPB Director Richard Cordray, in an unusual move, attended the weekly caucus meeting of the Democrats in the House of Representatives last week. That prompted his chief GOP antagonist, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, to say Cordray’s appearance shows that Democrats use the CFPB as a political war machine. “Everyone knows Mr. Cordray will likely leave the CFPB soon and pursue political office in Ohio again, but his attendance at what amounts to nothing more than a Democrat pep rally shows just how partisan and politicized he and his supposed ‘independent’ agency truly are,” the Republican said. According to Hensarling, liberal elites in Washington, DC, want to keep the bureau unaccountable to the American people so ...