FHFA

Financial industry advocates noted their concerns about draft legislation on third-party vendor authority with regard to third-party cloud storage providers in letters to House leaders.

The draft legislation proposes to amend the Bank Service Company Act to cover vendors of credit unions and entities supervised by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to the same extent as it covers banks and savings associations.

Find out what financial trade associations had to say about the proposed measure.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be allowed to recapitalize under an agreement signed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department allowing both government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to retain billions of dollars in dividend payments once every 12-month dividend period.

Allowing the GSEs to build capital was among the more than 50 recommendations included in Treasury’s plan for reforming the secondary housing market, and aligns with industry advocacy efforts.

Learn more details about the signed agreement.

Arguing that they have precedent to petition the Supreme Court to rule on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) constitutionality, multiple FHFA stakeholders filed a writ of certiorari petitioning the nation’s highest court for relief that was not provided in the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling on the agency’s constitutionality.

Specifically, the petitioners argued that the court should have provided relief pertaining to the net worth sweep, stipulating that all dividends received by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must be submitted to the Treasury Department.

Find out more details about the petitioners’ argument.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no longer will provide volume-based discounts for guarantee fees charged to lenders, per a recent directive from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) intended to level the playing field in the mortgage marketplace.

FHFA Director Mark Calabria, speaking at an industry event, characterized such “G-fee” discounts as attributable for market distortions in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

Learn more about the directive.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency recently signaled the conclusion of the mortgage servicing rights (MSR) financing pilot program for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, drawing praise for community bankers who questioned the agency’s authority to enact such a program in the first place.

The MSR pilot began in 2018 to provide financing to non-bank servicers to enable them to help account for a growing percentage of the overall servicing portfolio of the government-sponsored enterprises.

Learn more about the initiative and why community bankers objected to it.

With the unprecedented second-quarter mortgage origination volumes posted by some of the country’s largest mortgage lenders, coupled with persistent declines in mortgage rates, one might expect that qualified borrowers have been lining up to snatch up homes as they hit the market.

However, Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan told Dodd Frank Update that despite the record mortgage origination numbers posted in the first half of this year, the mortgage market continues to battle a shortage of affordable housing options.

Get an insider’s view of the current state of the mortgage industry.

One thing has become abundantly clear with regard to the prospect of reforming the county’s housing finance policy – Congress needs to act. However, that does not mean that regulators can only sit on their hands in the meantime.

Regulatory leaders tactfully noted during a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing that although there are actions they can take in the interim, their ability to act ultimately is limited by the willingness of Congress to reach a comprehensive bipartisan solution.

Get an in-depth look at how federal regulators plan to get the ball rolling.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently handed down a ruling on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) single-director structure that could hold implications as significant for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as they are for FHFA.

Notably, the Fifth Circuit’s opinion directly contradicts the D.C. Circuit’s ruling in the case of PHH Corp. v. CFPB that the bureau’s structure is constitutional.

Find out more details about the implications of the latest court ruling on the matter.

The plan to reshape the nation’s housing finance marketplace devised by President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be perhaps every bit as huge as the industry may have expected, with almost 50 recommended legislative and administrative actions. A key word to note there is “recommended.”

The sweeping reforms listed in the plan are termed as merely recommendations and do not set any hard timetables for tangible actions toward their implementation and assume a great deal more bipartisan cooperation than has been displayed in recent memory. 

Learn more details about the administration’s recommendations and look for more insight about the plan to come.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will use a four-phase process for validating and approving third-party credit score models under the Federal Housing Financial Agency’s (FHFA) new final rule, which implements Section 310 of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (EGRRCPA).

The new rule describes each phase in detail and establishes timeframes for each. The rule also details how the GSEs will handle their current credit-scoring model – “Classic FICO.”

Find out more about the implications of the final rule.