Inside the Beltway

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will rename its annual award for members who have demonstrated outstanding state and local association leadership for retiring Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association (OMBA) Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Marianne Collins at year’s end.

Given that she won MBA’s inaugural award for outstanding state and local leadership, MBA said it was fitting that the award will bear her name.

Find out more information about Collins and her career.  

Seventy percent of small-business owners who took part in Wells Fargo/Gallup’s latest quarterly Small Business Index survey indicated that they are optimistic about the economy and credit availability.

The results also offered insight into other perspectives among small-business owners concerning major policy shifts, such as changes in the nation’s tax laws.

Find out more details about the results of the poll.

After enjoying a steady uptrend in mortgage applications the previous month, mortgage bankers saw application volumes decline four weeks in a row in April, per data provided in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey.

MBA Association Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting Joel Kan said certain reductions in average contract interest rates, particularly in 30-year fixed-rate loans, may have been driven by market concerns outside the U.S.

Read on for more information.

Industry stakeholders interested in participating in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s advisory committee program have until May 5 to get their completed applications to the bureau for consideration.

Find out how to apply to become a member of the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board, Academic Research Council, Community Bank Advisory Council and Credit Union Advisory Council.

Read on to learn more about the application requirements.

Public perception has not always been kind to the banking industry in recent years but that appears to be changing, according to recent Morning Consult poll results revealed during the American Bankers Association’s recent summit in Washington D.C.

A majority of respondents indicated they trust banks with their sensitive information than other businesses and are happy with the customer service their bank provides.

Read on to get more insight.

During the trade group’s 2019 annual conference, the Consumer Bankers Association (CBA) presented the ninth annual Joe Belew Award to Woodforest National Bank for its Woodforest Foundry program in recognition of its community development efforts.

The program was established as tool, created by entrepreneurs, to help their peers to enhance local entrepreneurial ecosystems to revitalize underserved communities and help grow businesses.

Read on to learn more details about the program and the award.

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 Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) announced the election of its new chairman and its 2019-20 Executive Committee members during the final general session of the 2019 ICBA Live annual convention in Nashville.

Newly elected ICBA chairman Preston Kennedy, president and CEO of Zachary Bancshares Inc. in Zachary, La., also serves as chairman of the ICBA Executive Committee and board of directors and is an avid proponent of promoting new technology and other innovations in the community banking business, which was a theme throughout the conference.

Read on to learn more about Kennedy and the new committee members.

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) wrote to Senate Banking Committee leaders urging them to expand statutory requirements pertaining to the protection of personally identifiable information (PII).

ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey wrote in the letter that her organization supports current information privacy standards that apply to banks and believes that all entities that collect and store PII should be subject to them as well, including prudential regulators and third parties.

Find out more about the association’s stance on the issue of information privacy standards.

Recognizing that phishing is an ever-growing cybersecurity threat, the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released an infographic designed to highlight the impact it is having on consumers and the financial industry.

The infographic offers advice for how people can identify potential scams, how to protect themselves against phishing attempts and how to notify the proper authorities if they suspect such an attempt.

Read on to get more details about phishing attacks and methods to avoid being victimized.