The CFPB’s latest supervisory highlights report provides some Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection and reporting reminders for 2017. For starters, beginning with HMDA data collected in 2017 and submitted in 2018, responsibility to receive and process HMDA data will transfer from the Federal Reserve Board to the CFPB. “The HMDA agencies have agreed that a covered institution filing HMDA data collected in or after 2017 with the CFPB will be deemed to have submitted the HMDA data to the appropriate federal agency,” the bureau stated. (The HMDA agencies are the CFPB, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.) ...

The recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the dispute between the CFPB and PHH Corp. has some significant enforcement implications for the bureau, according to a top compliance attorney. At stake in particular is the bureau’s authority to enforce federal consumer financial protection laws as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA) prohibition of unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices (UDAAP). In a recent client note, Barbara Mishkin, of counsel in the Philadelphia office of the Ballard Spahr law firm, noted that among the court’s findings was that the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act’s three-year statute of limitations (SOL) applies to the agency’s administrative enforcement actions. “Not only did ...

Vendor Provides TRID-Oriented Video Content. Fast Forward Stories, a Bellingham, WA, provider of “brand-able” video content for the mortgage, title and real estate industries, recently released a download-ready library of 26 mortgage explainer videos on the CFPB’s Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure Rule (TRID).... ICYMI: Here’s What Happens to Fines, Penalties Levied by the CFPB. A new report from the Government Accountability Office summarizes what happens to the fines and penalties the CFPB imposes on financial institutions for mortgage-related offenses, as follows ...

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement amount to ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to resolve allegations of fraud related to insurance on a collateralized debt obligation backed by subprime mortgages. Details of the Abacus CDO settlement were not disclosed, although ACA initially sought $120 million in damages. First filed in 2011, ACA’s lawsuit accused Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Paulson & Co. of fraudulently persuading it to guarantee payments on the CDO prior to the financial crisis. ACA alleged...

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 ...