Risk Retention

President Barack Obama tapped veteran U.S. House Democrat Mel Watt to be the permanent leader of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The president’s announcement comes amid mounting tension over the FHFA’s stance on principle write-downs under acting Director Edward DeMarco. It also comes at a key moment for the FHFA, which is under pressure to hasten the wind down of government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Read on »

The market presence of government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will shrink over time and a new business entity will be established under a plan outlined by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Read on to learn what the FHFA had to say about GSE reform in its 2013 Conservatorship Scorecard for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Read on »

A coalition representing consumer groups, civil rights organizations and housing finance professionals urged regulators to align the criteria underlying two important mortgage-related definitions described in the Dodd-Frank Act. The Coalition for Sensible Housing Policy said aligning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recently finalized qualified mortgage requirements with the qualified residential mortgage definition currently being crafted by a group of regulators would benefit lower income bor... Read on »

Mortgage Industry participants have been discussing the potential impact of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule since the rule was finalized on Jan. 10. Now the CFPB is letting the public know what percentage of today’s loans it believes would meet the new QM standards. Read on for the details. Read on »

An analysis by mortgage data provider CoreLogic finds that while the early impact of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s qualified mortgage rules will likely be blunted, only half of current originations would meet the general QM standard set forth in the bureau’s new ability-to-repay rule. Read on »

A Federal Reserve governor said that while the Dodd-Frank Act’s qualified mortgage and qualified residential mortgage provisions were crafted to achieve different ends, regulators should consider whether to make the QM and QRM definitions “more or less congruent.” Governor Daniel Tarullo told lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that low and middle-income borrowers could be negatively impacted if the QM and QRM rules include “too much in the way of duplicate or multiple kinds of requirements.” ... Read on »

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may have finalized its qualified mortgage definition, but there’s another regulatory definition in the works that could impact the mortgage industry for years to come — the qualified residential mortgage definition. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry recently told industry participants that regulators are “listening carefully” to all stakeholders as they work to finalize the QRM rules. Read on for the details. Read on »

A Republican senator has weighed in on the issue of aligning the qualified residential mortgage standard with the qualified mortgage standard under the recently issued ability-to-repay rule.  In a letter to regulators, Sen. Bob Corker expressed what he sees as the long-term impact to the financial markets if QRM and QM are not aligned. Read on for his insight. Read on »

The leader of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said Congress may make substantive corrections to Dodd-Frank, but any such changes will likely have little impact on some forthcoming major rules. Curry recently told California bankers that regulators are “nearing the finish line” as they work to finalize two important rules. He also said OCC examiners are noticing some troubling trends. Read on for the details. Read on »

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision revised a component of its Basel III reforms, permitting banks to include certain residential mortgage backed securities in the calculation of a key liquidity measure. Read on for the details. Read on »