Mortgage

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently announced the publication of the first set of modified Loan Application Registers (LARs) mandated by the 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) rule.

Per the rule, much of the detailed information included in the LARs has been modified in a way designed to protect sensitive borrower information.

Find out more details about the published data.

The Senate voted 52-44 to confirm Mark Calabria as the next director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) motion for cloture was approved.

The financial industry has expressed strong support for many of his views on reshaping the secondary mortgage market, including ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but he’s faced criticism for his past comments on FHFA, affordable housing goals and the conservatorship.  

Learn what the industry had to say about his confirmation.

As the Senate Banking Committee engaged in discussion regarding potential housing finance reforms, President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum outlining his administration’s goals for enacting sweeping reforms to the secondary market.

The financial services industry expressed support for the administration’s stated goals of ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and promoting competition in the secondary market while providing taxpayer protections.

Find out more details about the administration’s reform priorities and the industry’s take on the matter.

Nearly six months after naming him acting CEO, Fannie Mae announced that it would be removing the word “acting” from Hugh Frater’s title, effective March 26.

Frater, who has served on the Fannie Mae board since 2016, was tapped to take up interim CEO duties upon the retirement of Tim Mayopoulos, who stepped down from the role last October.

Find out more about the appointment.

As talk of potential legislative action to reform the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) persists in Congress, financial trade associations have put forth their own list of recommendations for improving the bureau and its rule and regulations.

A recent letter from Consumer Bankers Association President and CEO Richard Hunt and a whitepaper released by the Mortgage Bankers Association detailed numerous suggestions for such changes.

Find out specifics about what the trades have recommended and where there is overlap in those suggestions.

As part of its effort to improve its technology designed to help mortgage lenders, the mortgage industry’s standards organization (MISMO) is working to expand its JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) initiatives and is seeking industry feedback on the subject.

The announcement came a day after MISMO recommended the use of the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard for documentation, implementation, execution and exchange of business rules and decisions across the mortgage industry.

Find out what both announcements could mean for the mortgage industry.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently issued a bulletin to all entities it supervises with details indicating the data fields examiners will use to test and validate the accuracy and reliability of loan data collected in accordance with Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) requirements as of 2018.

The bulletin outlines the different reporting requirements for banks mandated to comply with expanded HMDA reporting standards and those only responsible for reporting data required by the original HMDA rule.

Read on to learn more details about the bulletin.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) 18th Supervisory Highlights report, the first released since Kathy Kraninger became CFPB director, highlights observations the bureau’s examiners made about potential consumer harm related to automobile lending, deposits, mortgage servicing and remittances.

The report also highlights developments in the bureau’s supervision programs – Supervisory Recommendations – which it will use in addition to its Matters Requiring Attention supervisory tool.

Find out more about what is covered in the report.

Recognizing that more and more mortgage lenders are seeing the value in offering eClosings and working towards digitalizing the entire mortgage process, October Research LLC and Dodd Frank Update put together a webinar with two top-tier industry experts to answer common questions about what challenges lenders face when trying to get into the eMortgage business.

Fannie Mae Director of eMortgage Strategy and Operations Shane Hartzler and Pepper Hamilton LLP Special Counsel John Levonick offered insight about how lenders can address a multitude of those perceived barriers to getting started in the digital mortgage space and spelled out some of the benefits to doing so.

Read on to find out more details about what the experts discussed.