News By Edition

Whenever the words real estate and innovation are mentioned in the same sentence, it is often a safe bet that the last word in that sentence will be Blockchain. (See?)

John Heck, director and industry general manager at DXC Technology; Matt Einheber, principal at Transfer: Real Estate Intelligence; and Piper Moretti, CEO of the Crypto Realty Group, detailed what ways Blockchain is the invisible X factor poised to reshape the real estate transaction during the 2018 National Settlement Services Summit (NS3).

Find out what they had to say about the technology’s potential for reshaping the real estate transaction. 

President Donald Trump’s pick to become the next permanent director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) narrowly received Senate Banking Committee approval Thursday via a 13-12 roll call vote along party lines.

Seven Democrats used the opportunity reiterate their reasons for opposing her bid to run the nation’s top financial watchdog, including those embroiled in tight re-election bids. Committee Chairman Mike Crapo and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) were the only two Republicans to speak up in support for her confirmation before the vote.

Consider more takeaways from the committee’s vote.

The future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) payday lending rule has been mired in uncertainty since acting director Mick Mulvaney’s January announcement that he intended to “revisit” it, and seemed quite bleak after Mulvaney filed an amicus brief in June supporting the plaintiffs in a case challenging the rule’s validity.

Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) Assistant Vice President and Regulatory Counsel Rhonda Thomas-Whitley told Dodd Frank Update the fact that Kathy Kraninger’s nomination to the director’s chair at the bureau is still pending full Senate approval is reason enough for any interested party reluctant to make any predictions about the likelihood of such a move.

Find out more details about considerations that could work against the rule’s chances of surviving reconsideration by the bureau.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced that it will begin accepting special charter applications from non-depository financial services providers.

The announcement came in tandem with a Treasury Department report identifying regulatory improvements that could provide better oversight of support nonbank financial institutions, addressing a major point of contention for the banking industry.

Find out more about the agency’s announcement and the industry’s reaction.

To encourage continued growth among fintech companies and all parts of the financial services industry, a recent Treasury Department report recommends the curtailment of certain regulations enacted in response to the financial crisis that may hinder innovation in the financial marketplace.

With that in mind, the report lists numerous recommendations for action Congress and federal regulators can take to better tailor the regulatory environment accordingly.

Get an in-depth picture of how the department believes the marketplace can be more innovation-friendly.

Siding with certain banking trade groups, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service recently proposed rules and guidance stipulating that banks qualify for a tax deduction created by the enactment of the 2017 tax reform bill to help small businesses.

Treasury stated that “banking” and “financial services” are separate industries, with financial services qualifying as a specified service trade or business (SSTB), unable to access the 20 percent tax deduction for pass-through entities.

Learn what the distinction could mean for the nearly 2,000 banks registered as pass-through businesses. 

A debt collection company’s petition to have a civil investigative demand (CID) set aside or modified was denied in part and granted in part by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which granted its request to keep certain CID records confidential although the company failed to show good cause on its own. 

The bureau cited errors in the company’s arguments that indicated incorrect interpretations of the CID process and the statutory provisions that govern it. The perceived need for increased clarity was among the points stressed by commenters in response to the bureau’s Request for Information about the process in January.

Learn what missteps the company made in its reasoning that led the bureau to reject most of its arguments.

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay a $2.09 billion civil money penalty for misrepresenting the value of mortgages it originated and sold to investors who suffered billions of dollars in losses as a result.

The Department of Justice alleged that the bank knew income information included in the loans in question, from 2005 to 2007, was inaccurate, and that the loans were of lower quality than the bank represented. Investors, including federally insured financial institutions, lost billions of dollars investing in residential mortgage-backed securities containing loans originated by Wells Fargo.  

Find out more about the charges against the bank that led to the settlement.

Marx Sterbcow, managing attorney at Sterbcow Law Group, and Justin Wiseman, associate vice president of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) took part in a regulatory panel June 6 at the National Settlement Services Summit (NS3).

The session was moderated by Chuck Cain, EVP Agency of WFG National Title Insurance Co., who asked the panelists what the future held in store for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Read on to learn what the panelists had to say about enforcement trends and other topics.

Velocity Solutions, which provides revenue enhancement solutions to regional and community financial institutions, recently acquired CourtesyCloud’s CourtesyConnect/CourtesyLimit automated overdraft management system. CourtesyCloud is owned by BSG Financial Group.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently issued a bulletin clarifying the agency’s amended policies used in determining how well a bank has done complying with Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requirements.

The OCC also announced it would be seeking industry input on improving CRA implementation through an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, and the Treasury Department issued a memorandum suggesting ways CRA implementation could be improved as well.

Find out more details about what revisions the OCC has made to its guidance and what recommendations have been put forth so far.

PromonTech, the technology unit of Promontory MortgagePath, recently integrated its point-of-sale (POS) solution, Borrower Wallet, with FormFree’s automated asset verification service, AccountChek.

Cloudvirga, a digital mortgage point-of-sale (POS) software provider, recently announced that Finance of America Mortgage (FAM) will deploy the Cloudvirga Enterprise POS as its digital mortgage platform.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Student Loan Ombudsman Seth Frotman has resigned, accusing acting director Mick Mulvaney’s leadership team of shirking the bureau’s underlying mission and succumbing to political bias, something the bureau frequently has been accused of since its creation.

When asked for comment, a CFPB representative told Dodd Frank Update the bureau does not comment on specific personnel matters. However, other interested parties did have some things to say about Frotman’s exit and his claims decrying the bureau’s actions under Mulvaney’s watch.

Get a detailed look at Frotman’s sweeping claims about how the bureau has functioned during Mulvaney’s tenure that led him to resign.

For the second straight quarter, banks enjoyed record profits, as reported by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in its Quarterly Banking Profile.

The latest report indicated that FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions saw more than $60 billion in aggregate profits in the second quarter of 2018, a 25.1 percent increase from the previous year. The FDIC attributed the profit gains to higher net interest income and the lower effective tax rate instituted by the new tax law enacted in 2017 by President Donald Trump.

Find out more details about the record-setting quarter.

The federal banking agencies have issued interim final rules expanding the 18-month on-site examination cycle to cover more insured depository institutions, U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks.

The expansion is authorized by the recently enacted the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

Find out specifics about what institutions will be impacted by the new interim rules.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently issued a final rule amending dollar thresholds for multiple provisions of Regulation Z, which implements the Truth in Lending Act (TILA).

The thresholds apply to the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act, the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) and Qualified Mortgage (QM) loans.

Read on to learn more details about the amended thresholds.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no longer will have a significant stake in the single-family rental marketplace with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) having concluded that the market’s larger investors can continue to succeed without liquidity provided by the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

The announcement marks the end of the GSEs’ single-family rental pilot programs, initiated two years ago to help the entities “test and learn” more about the market and best practices.

Find out more details about the agency’s decision.

The third fintech company to vie for a bank charter with both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and Utah regulators in little more than a year also recently became the third to encounter expressed opposition from community bankers.

Weeks after Nelnet, a Nebraska-based student lender, made its bid to form a Utah-chartered industrial loan corporation (ILC), the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) urged the FDIC to deny the company’s request and impose a two-year moratorium on future ILC applications, as it did in response to SoFi’s application in June 2017 and Square’s that September.

Find out more details about why ICBA opposes ILC charters. 

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is seeking feedback on a proposed Accounting Standards Update to amend transition requirements and provide clarity regarding the scope of FASB’s 2016 current expected credit loss standard.

The proposal would clarify when the new accounting standard will be applicable and offer key details about its treatment of operating lease receivables. Credit union advocates noted that they are awaiting guidance addressing how the standard will be applied to their market segment.

Learn more details about how the proposal would address industry concerns.

As nonbank fintech apps have grown in circulation, so have their users’ concerns about their privacy, according to a survey by The Clearing House.

Two-thirds of consumers who use such apps indicated that they are “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” about data privacy, researchers found. They also found that few consumers are inclined to do anything about their concerns.

Read on to get more details about the survey findings.

MISMO, the mortgage industry’s standards organization, has announced that it is seeking participants to join its Emerging Technologies Community of Practice workgroup, focused on identifying and monitoring emerging technologies with the potential to have significant impacts on the mortgage industry.

Participants will gain early insights into new innovations, as well as opportunities to collaborate on related initiatives intended to benefit the mortgage industry, according to a press release by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Read on to find out more about the new workgroup.

An online payday lender and 20 interrelated entities recently settled with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over allegations that the defendants unlawfully originated short-term, small-dollar loans and initiated unauthorized collections on them without consumers’ knowledge.

In light of the defendants’ limited ability to pay, the settlement stipulates that the company’s obligation to pay a monetary penalty redressing consumers for money unlawfully collected from them will be suspended as long as they comply with the terms of a bureau consent order.

Find out more information about the terms of the settlement.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and 11 financial regulators and related organizations comprise an initiative designed to facilitate more efficient lines of communication between technology-focused firms and regulators dubbed the Global Financial Innovation Network. 

The network will strive to help companies navigate internationally as they seek to expand and cultivate new ideas, and to establish a new framework for cooperation between financial services regulators on innovation-related matters.

Find out more information about the newly formed collaborative.

A federal judge ruled in favor of a law firm charged with creating the false impression that attorneys had reviewed consumers’ debt collection information, ruling that allegations brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lacked merit.

Judge Donald Nugent of the District Court of Northern Ohio found that the bureau failed to offer evidence of any consumer harm resulting from Weltman’s practice of identifying itself as a law firm in its demand letters, or that the firm violated the Fair Debt Collection Procedures Act or the Dodd-Frank Act’s prohibition against unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices.

Find out more details about the ruling.

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) has named Matthew Biliouris as the agency’s new director of its Office of Consumer Financial Protection.

Biliouris, who became the office’s deputy director in July 2013, has served as its acting director since Gail Laster vacated the post in October 2017 after nearly five years in the role.

Find out more about the experience Biliouris brings to the role.

Certain financial institutions will be exempt from having to send customers annual privacy notices as a result of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) recently finalized rule amending Regulation P per updates to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act approved in December 2015. 

To be exempt, an institution must meet two conditions regarding the types of entities with which it shares customer information and whether it has changed its disclosure policies.

Find out more about what institutions qualify for the exemption.  

Citigroup recently agreed to pay more than $19 million in fines to the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for mortgage-related issues and unauthorized trading. 

The Fed fined the bank $8.6 million, citing improper handling of residential mortgage-related documents, while the SEC levied $10.5 million in fines against the company over allegations that employees engaged in unauthorized proprietary trading, and for failing to detect fraudulent loans issued by one of its subsidiaries.  

Read on to find out more about the settlements.

President Donald Trump recently signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019, which excludes a provision opposed by credit union advocates who argued it would have put credit unions at a disadvantage.

Banking advocates wrote to congressional leaders arguing that the provision would help provide military members more suitable options for their financial needs and increase fairness in the military marketplace. 

Find out more details about the controversial provision.

After recording a 3 percent decline in the first week ending in August, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Market Composite Index showed a 2 percent seasonally-adjusted decrease in mortgage applications for the week ending Aug. 10.

The index measures mortgage loan application volume across conventional loans, refinances and loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on both a seasonally adjusted and unadjusted basis.

Read on to learn more trend details.

Gateway Mortgage Group, a full-service mortgage company founded by Kevin Stitt, for the sixth straight year was ranked among America’s 5,000 fastest-growing privately-held companies as part of the 2018 Inc. 5000. It is the company’s eighth time on the list in its history, which is only true of 2 percent of companies, according to Inc.

Wolters Kluwer recently partnered with SettlementOne to help lenders streamline their credit valuation processes with prospective customers during the mortgage loan application process. The partnership links SettlementOne’s credit and data verification capabilities with Wolters Kluwer’s flagship ComplianceOne mortgage and lending platforms, according to a press release.

Porter Keadle Moore (PKM), an accounting and advisory firm that serves leading public and private clients nationwide, recently announced the hiring of Larry Gildersleve as its director of practice growth. Gildersleve brought more than 33 years of financial and operational excellence in manufacturing, construction, technology, private equity, retail, auto finance and banking to PKM, according to a press release. 

Asserting that the Dodd-Frank Act does not expressly authorize the agency to examine financial companies for Military Lending Act (MLA) violations, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) acting director Mick Mulvaney recently decided to suspend supervisory activities related to the law.

Bureau spokesman John Czwartacki said Mulvaney reached his decision after a thorough review of the agency’s procedures intended to curb what the Trump administration and many financial industry professionals considered overly aggressive enforcement activities.

Find out more about what the decision means for the future of the law’s enforcement.

It is important to have a plan and think out what you will need to do in the minutes, days and months after an attack occurs, but it is also critically important to know who to make aware of the situation and how you can help one another. 

During the National Settlement Services Summit, experts in the field shared how to best work with your partners after a cyberattack. 

Read on for more details.

A new task force initiated by an executive order from President Donald Trump is intended to fight fraud through the combined efforts of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures and Trading Commission, as well as other government agencies and officials.

The task force is the latest in a series of similar coalitions created by previous administrations.

Find out more about the functions and leadership structure of the new cooperative entity.

The method by which companies file operational financial statement information with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will change over the next three years as the agency phases in rule amendments mandating the use of Inline XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) for such filings.

The adoption of Inline XBRL, which is both human- and machine-readable for the purposes of validation, aggregation and analysis, is part of the SEC’s ongoing disclosure modernization initiative.

Read on to learn more about the new mandates.

LendingQB, a SaaS loan origination technology solution provider, recently partnered with MortgageHippo in a way intended to improve the borrower experience, lower the cost of origination and increase loan officer productivity. 

At the 2018 National Settlement Services Summit (NS3) in Detroit, panelists addressed how title agents, the keepers of critical data “gold,” can best leverage it to acquire market share and business. The title agent is at the center of the closing transaction and captures critical data elements that lenders need to meet for compliance.

DocMagic eServices Director Tim Anderson and Pepper Hamilton, LLP, Special Counsel John Levonick told the audience that despite two years of TRID and now with the new FHFA Uniform Closing Dataset (UCD) requirement, most processes are still very manual so they keep asking the regulatory agencies and GSEs to water down and delay the requirements. 

Read on to learn more. 

The latest issue to come to light at Wells Fargo is a software glitch that caused hundreds of borrowers, who subsequently lost their homes, to be denied loan modifications from April 2010 and October 2015.

The bank disclosed details about the matter in a 10-K filing the company submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and has set aside approximately $8 million to redress those affected.

Find out more about the issue and what the company plans to do to prevent a similar event in the future.

On the day it announced second-quarter earnings, Zillow Group also announced its first move into mortgage originations, detailing its purchase of Kansas-based online lender Mortgage Lenders of America.

Zillow said the acquisition would allow the company to streamline and shorten the homebuying process for consumers who use Zillow Offers.

Yet the deal comes with risk, as CEO Spencer Rascoff said Zillow’s “compliance bill is going up.” Read on for more details on the acquisition.

To improve the quality of information exchanged between financial entities and third-party debt collectors, the Treasury provided a host of regulatory actions for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and other federal agencies to consider in its recent report titled “A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities Nonbank Financials, Fintech, and Innovation.”

In addition to rulemaking and guidance activities, the department’s recommendations also involve reforms to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and related actions by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to facilitate better data aggregation practices.

Find out what actions the Treasury is recommending various parties take to accomplish the aforementioned objectives.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently issued a new policy intended to protect veteran homeowners from predatory lending practices when obtaining a VA-guaranteed refinance loan.

The policy implements a provision of S. 2155, also known as the 2018 Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

Find out more about the new policy by reading on.

ClosingCorp’s SmartFees recently was selected by Stearns Lending, LLC, one of the country’s top 10 mortgage lenders, its rate and fee data solution. SmartFees provides more than 4,000 Stearns brokers with vendor-verified rate and fee data from thousands of service providers located throughout the nation

The Senate Banking Committee recently announced that it would postpone its vote whether to advance President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to the full Senate for consideration.

The committee’s decision came the same day that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Democratic committee members sent a letter to Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) urging him to delay the vote “until the committee receives all responsive and non-privileged information and documents that committee members have requested.”

Find out more about Warren’s letter and Kraninger’s responses.  

During the 2018 National Settlement Services Summit (NS3) in Detroit, Meridian Title CEO Mark Myers discussed the company’s response from the time it officially received an investigative notice from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

What documents did the CFPB require and how much time and effort was needed to respond?  

Read on to learn more about Meridian’s response to the CFPB’s investigation and subsequent consent order.

In the ongoing hunt to create mortgage technology that can be personalized in hopes of increasing customer retention, Black Knight, Inc. is confident its new LoanSphere Servicing Digital solution is about as on point as it gets.

Black Knight Chief Product Officer Shelley Leonard told Dodd Frank Update how offering customers a user-friendly solution with useful, personalized data about their loan and their home, companies can strengthen customer relationships and continue engaging borrowers long after a loan is closed.

Find out more about the app and what makes it stand out from others in the marketplace.

Electing to instead shift its focus toward implementing regulatory relief provisions enacted by S. 2155, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently said there will not be a 2018 decision on updating the credit scoring model used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The recently enacted law requires the FHFA to engage in rulemaking to define the standards and criteria the government-sponsored enterprises will use to validate credit score models.

Find out more about the agency’s decision and what it means for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The slew of criticism directed at President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the next permanent director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the federal agency where she works at alongside the bureau’s current acting director recently came to a head with a lawsuit filed by the consumer advocacy group Allied Progress.

The group is suing the bureau and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over unanswered requests for information about Kathy Kraninger’s experience relevant to the role of CFPB director and her involvement in developing and implementing Trump administration policies on immigration and disaster relief. 

Find out more information about the matter.

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been extended through Nov. 30 following  the passage of the latest in a series of congressional bills written to keep the program going. The vote and the bill’s signing came on the day the program was set to expire.

Numerous financial trade organizations long have advocated for a long-term reauthorization plan to avoid future instances where the plan could come dangerously close to lapsing, which could adversely impact the housing market.

Find out what various industry trade associations have to say about the matter.