With the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) recent decision to temporarily put the brakes on the implementation of the new Uniform Residential Loan Application issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Dodd Frank Update reached out Garris Horn PLLC Managing Member Richard Horn to find out what revisions the agency is likely to make to the address industry concerns. The most likely element to be revised in the new form, also known as Fannie Mae’s Form 1003, is its language preference question, which was added by FHFA to identify Limited English Proficiency consumers. Horn noted that the question presents a multitude of risks for lenders.

The Federal Reserve is not objecting any of the 18 capital plans it evaluated as part of its Dodd-Frank Act-mandated Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), part two of the agency’s annual bank stress tests, finding that the nation’s largest banks have strong capital levels and planning processes. All but one firm were found to be meeting supervisory expectations for capital planning.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) is planning to centralize the supervision and resolution activities for the largest banks and complex financial institutions under a new division which will be dubbed the Division of Complex Institution Supervision and Resolution (CISR). CISR will be responsible for activities currently divided among three separate divisions of FDIC when it becomes operational July 21.

The merger of BB&T and SunTrust, which drew scrutiny from Democrats and consumer groups when it was announced in February, found a new point of contention after executives announced the name for what will become the nation’s sixth largest bank – Truist. The new branding has not been well-received by the public and now is the subject of a lawsuit for alleged trademark infringement.

New bipartisan legislation proposes to improve clarity in federal student loan disclosure forms to ensure that student borrowers understand the associated costs and terms before completing the application process. The bill would subject federal student lenders to the same disclosure requirements as private lenders – a prospect the financial industry supports.

Discussions about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) can become heated partisan debates. However, that was not the case during the agency’s symposium on the meaning and use of “abusive” in enforcement actions – the first in a series of symposiums discussing similar topics.  The event featured insight from two panels’ worth of experts.

Industry stakeholders will have an additional time to comment on two of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) most recent rulemaking activities related the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) – one relating to discretionary data-point requirements and another relating to proposed collection threshold requirements. The extensions are in response to stakeholders indicating the need for more time to review the bureau’s forthcoming overviews of 2018 HMDA data and the loan level dataset compiled by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

The three federal bank regulatory agencies adopted a final rule to streamline regulatory reporting first- and third-quarter call report requirements for small institutions. Although the rule is intended to save banks time, community banking advocates have argued that it fails to fulfill the intent of Congress or to meaningfully relieve regulatory burdens on small banks.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently issued a proposed rule to implement legislation intended to strengthen the agency’s oversight of its loan programs and increase maximum lending authority. The proposal implements provisions of the Small Business 7(a) Lending Oversight Reform Act, which was drafted in response to growth in SBA 7(a) lending activity.