About two-thirds of banks are willing to offer loans that don’t meet standards for qualified mortgages, according to a recent survey by the American Bankers Association. Lenders are concerned about the liability that comes with non-QMs, but borrower demand for non-QMs has prompted a wider range of mortgage offerings than many had projected after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s QM standards took effect. “More and more, in talking to our banks, I would say there’s an increased comfort in going beyond QM, doing business the way they’ve traditionally done business and expecting to meet either the QM or the ability-to-repay standard.” said Jonathan Miller, deputy director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s division of depositor and consumer protection. At a meeting last week by the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Community Banking, Derek Williams, president and CEO of Columbus Community Bank, said...

Bank of America will have to pay $727 million in restitution to consumers who were harmed by practices related to its credit card add-on products, under the terms of a consent order announced last week by the CFPB. That is the single largest amount of money yet returned to consumers in such an action by the bureau. BofA also agreed to pay a $20 million civil money penalty to the CFPB. The bureau went after BofA on two fronts: allegedly deceptive marketing practices as well as unfair billing practices. The marketing practices at issue had to do with two credit-card payment-protection products, “Credit Protection Plus” and “Credit Protection Deluxe.” “The bureau found that the telemarketing scripts Bank of America used...

Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee have formally requested Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, conduct a full committee hearing into potential discriminatory policies and practices that affect employees not only at the CFPB but in other federal financial regulatory agencies as well. Ranking Member Maxine Waters, D-CA, announced the request at a hearing recently conducted by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which looked into allegations of employee discrimination and retaliation at the CFPB. Waters echoed sentiments of fellow Democrats, who expressed concern earlier that the hearing was focused on discussing ongoing claims by a single employee instead of the larger issue of employee discrimination and the retaliation and harassment that whistleblowers experience. Dwelling on the employee’s...

The CFPB needs to up its game and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its supervisory activities, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Office of Inspector General, the IG for the bureau. “Specifically, we found that the CFPB needs to improve its reporting timeliness and reduce the number of examination reports that have not been issued, adhere to its unequivocal standards concerning the use of standard compliance rating definitions in its examination reports, and update its policies and procedures to reflect current practices,” the OIG said. The report contains 12 recommendations designed to assist the CFPB in strengthening its supervision program, one of which is to monitor the timeliness of examination reporting against the requirements the agency...

Debt-settlement company Mission Settlement Agency and its principal, Michael Levitis, pleaded guilty in New York to conspiracy charges of mail and wire fraud, giving the CFPB a significant victory in its first criminal referral. As part of the plea deal struck with federal prosecutors, Levitis and Mission Settlement agreed to forfeit $2.2 million. Levitis faces as much as 10 years in prison, and his company could be fined as much as an additional $4.39 million. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe on Aug. 21, 2014. In addition to Levitis’ plea, four other former Mission employees, Denis Kurlyand, Boris Shulman, Felix Lemberskiy, and Zakhir Shirinov, previously pled guilty for their roles in the scheme...

The issue of the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the CFPB may finally have been put to rest now, after the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the last remnants of a case brought by the watchdog group, Judicial Watch, under the Freedom of Information Act. Back in September, the court ruled that the CFPB had properly discharged its FOIA obligations in the case for all the documents at issue except one, an e-mail from a White House staffer to a CFPB employee. At the time, “the court agreed with the CFPB’s position that it was entitled to rely on the deliberative process privilege, the attorney client/attorney work product privilege, or the presidential communications...

The Mortgage Bankers Association is urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide a transparent process by which interested parties could request a recalculation of the FHA loan limits and present supporting evidence. By statute, maximums for FHA loan limits in high-cost areas were reduced to $625,500 from $729,750 at the beginning of the year for one-unit residential properties, the same maximum loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for similar properties in high-cost areas. The MBA said HUD made further reductions in FHA FY 2014 loan limits in approximately 300 counties and county equivalents across the country, with many experiencing significant reductions. The trade group believes these changes were not required by statute. To the extent that the loan-limit reductions in those areas were discretionary, the MBA strongly urged HUD to moderate its ...

Ginnie Mae will provide a one-month grace period to April 30, 2014, for issuers to complete the submission of their master agreement to the Master Agreement Management System (MAMS) within the agency’s enterprise portal. The deadline for submission is March 31, 2014. The master agreements must first be accepted by the MAMS before an issuer may request or receive a “Transfer of Issuer Responsibility.” Failure to comply with this requirement could adversely affect the issuer’s ability to obtain commitment authority and to issue new pools or receive pool transfers. Although many issuers have resubmitted their master agreements, some found it difficult to complete the process within the required timeframe, according to Ginnie Mae. Providing a one-month grace period would help issuers to complete their resubmission. Issuers that still experience ...

Companies that have received government subpoenas for electronically stored information (ESI) in connection with federal investigations of financial fraud and other white-collar crimes might find some relief in two recent court rulings, according to a recent legal analysis. In a Dechert LLP legal update, attorneys Ben Barnett, Rebecca Kahan and Nathaniel Hopkins said heightened anti-fraud activities at the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have resulted in increased criminal prosecutions, criminal probes and enforcement actions. Many of these actions have shown...

It’s only a matter of time before the remaining big bank defendants settle lawsuits filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency over billions in non-agency mortgage-backed securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the years leading up to the housing crisis, predicts a legal expert. Last week, Bank of America agreed to a $9.3 billion settlement that covers its own dealings as well as those of Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, which it acquired in 2008. The agreement covers some $57 billion of MBS issued or underwritten by these firms.