PHH Corp. and Ocwen Financial – both large publicly traded nonbank mortgage lenders – released third quarter results suggesting that at least one of them, Ocwen, might have a future. Ocwen, which has been bleeding red ink for roughly two years, posted net third-quarter earnings of $9.4 million, though there were several caveats to its results, including previously announced legal settlements that have yet to be paid. Still, Ocwen continued...

The Supreme Court of the U.S. heard oral arguments this week in a case involving novel lawsuits filed by the city of Miami seeking to recover damages from lenders. Questions and comments by Supreme Court justices indicated some disagreement but perhaps a willingness to let the city pursue its controversial lawsuit. In Bank of America v. City of Miami, BofA and Wells Fargo are challenging lawsuits brought by Miami under the Fair Housing Act. The city is seeking millions of dollars in damages, claiming that mortgages originated by the banks in the run-up to the financial crisis were predatory and counteracted the city’s efforts on fair housing, causing the city to lose the benefits of social, professional and business opportunities that come with an integrated community free from housing discrimination. Neal Katyal, a partner at the law firm of Hogan Lovells and former acting solicitor general of the U.S., argued...

Barclays plc is reportedly working out a deal with the Department of Justice for a much lower settlement amount to resolve non-agency MBS and ongoing multi-agency investigations of other mortgage-related matters, according to a recent Bloomberg report. Citing a source “with knowledge of the situation,” the news service said the London-based bank has rejected an initial amount offered by the DOJ, aiming instead to limit the settlement to no more than $2 billion, possibly less. The report didn’t disclose the amount DOJ offered, although industry observers speculated it might be significantly more than what the firm is willing to pay. Like many U.S. and European banks, Barclays was...

Collecting disaggregated race and ethnicity data a full year before the revised Home Mortgage Disclosure Act regulations become effective will benefit covered creditors as they become used to the new requirements and make the necessary system adjustments to accommodate a new wave of granular HMDA data, according to industry attorneys. A policy statement issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in late September creates a temporary safe harbor for lenders that take advantage of the one-year window – Jan. 1, 2017, through Dec. 31, 2017 – to collect disaggregated ethnic and racial information in their home-loan application if borrowers agree to provide it. Previous amendments to HMDA will require...

In the weeks leading up to the effective date of the CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule, the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, made clear that, from a supervisory perspective, the bureau would view enforcement of the rule as more diagnostic than punitive – an approach many industry officials believe should continue. In commenting on the CFPB’s proposed rule to clarify a number of aspects of TRID, the Mortgage Bankers Association strongly urged the current diagnostic examination approach be formally extended until the changes necessitated by a final rule have been fully implemented and it is clear that the compliance difficulties with such a complex rule have been largely resolved. “With this policy and the bureau’s and industry’s active engagement as compliance moves forward ...

A number of industry software and technology vendors told the CFPB they must have a minimum of one year to fully test and comply with all the changes the agency wants to implement with its TRID clarifying proposed rule. Computer systems and software vendor Jack Henry & Associates said that due to the nature of these proposed changes (which will require revisions to forms, calculations and logic in the software), the industry needs an absolute minimum of 12 months for its implementation period. “Software providers such as Jack Henry & Associates work with multiple business partners and need lead time to analyze, plan, design, develop, test, document and distribute software changes to our financial institution clients prior to the implementation ...

Comments by CFPB Director Richard Cordray at last week’s Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Boston indicate that the industry can expect the bureau’s diagnostic approach to enforcing the TRID rule will continue, apparently until further notice. “As I told you last year, in our examination work around compliance with this rule, we and the other regulators have pledged to be sensitive to the progress made by lenders that are squarely focused on making good faith efforts to come into compliance with the rule on time,” Cordray said. “We have also said that our approach would be diagnostic and corrective, not punitive. That is precisely what we are doing.” This means that the regulators will evaluate a company’s compliance management system ...

The CFPB said last week it will issue warning letters to 44 residential lenders and mortgage brokers that are not properly collecting Home Mortgage Disclosure Act information – data that helps the agency uncover discriminatory lending practices – and advised them to review their practices and step up their compliance efforts, if need be. The bureau said it has information that appears to show they may be required to collect, record and report data about their housing-related lending activity, and that they may be in violation of those requirements. The CFPB said it identified the 44 companies by reviewing available bank and nonbank mortgage data. The identities of the 44 firms were not provided by the agency. “Financial institutions that fail to ...

Mortgage servicers are going to have to bring their “A” game more consistently to the table if they wish to avoid punitive actions from the CFPB, the bureau’s director, Richard Cordray, made clear recently. Speaking to the attendees of the Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Boston last week, the nation’s top consumer regulator said it is regrettable that much of the damage done during the financial crisis to consumers and the broader economy could likely have been contained early on by more effective servicing. “A more effective system might have been up to the task of working with struggling borrowers to find appropriate ways to avoid foreclosure through loan modifications and short sales,” Cordray said. “But servicers were ill prepared ...

One little noticed provision of the CFPB’s recent proposal on disclosures of records and information would constrain regulated entities from sharing information about when they are being investigated by the CFPB – a concept industry representatives strongly oppose. More specifically, the proposal would restrict individual entities that are the subject of a civil investigative demand (CID) from voluntarily disclosing the receipt of such a demand, which is confidential investigative information (CII), without first getting permission from the CFPB. In a joint comment letter submitted to the CFPB, the Consumer Mortgage Coalition, the Credit Union National Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions said they strongly oppose this component of ...