Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) have been busy engaging with regulators and industry members on issues around the financial services industry.
McHenry sent letters to a number of federal regulators, asking for work on outstanding rules, while Waters led efforts to engage with mortgage servicers about their work on communication during the pandemic.
McHenry sent letters to financial regulators, including the prudential financial regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), urging them to “finalize outstanding rules that will stimulate economic growth and to repeal existing regulations that hinder employers from directing resources to their employees and their communities.”
“The complexity of the federal regulatory environment creates extraordinary challenges for consumers and small businesses. This complexity is even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic,” McHenry wrote to CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger. “As our country charts a path toward a full economic recovery, federal financial regulators must ensure that unnecessary regulatory burdens do not threaten this effort. To that end, federal financial regulators should be working to finalize outstanding rules that will stimulate economic growth as quickly as possible and to repeal existing regulations that hinder employers from directing resources to their employees and their communities.”
In McHenry’s letters, he cited rules from each regulator on which he wanted them to take action:
CFPB
- Payday, Vehicle Title, And Certain High-Cost Installment Loans
- Qualified Mortgage Definition/GSE Patch
- Debt Collection Practices
FDIC
- Valid When Made
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Guidance
- Brokered Deposits
- Swap Margin Rules/Inter-Affiliate Initial Margin
- Community Reinvestment Act
- Volcker Rule Covered Funds Clarification and Regulatory Harmonization
Federal Reserve
- Volcker Rule Covered Funds Clarification and Regulatory Harmonization
- Risk-Based Capital Requirements for Certain Insurance Companies
- Swap Margin Rules/Inter-Affiliate Initial Margin
FHFA
- Enterprise Capital Rule Requirements
HUD
- Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Streamlining and Enhancement
- Reconsideration of HUD’s Implementation of the Fair Housing Act’s Disparate Impact Standard
- Project Approval for Single Family Condominium
- Applying the Fair Housing Act to Decide Whether a Person’s Request to Have an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Should Be Granted
- Regulations Associated with H.R. 3700, the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016
OCC
- Valid When Made
- Community Reinvestment Act
- Swap Margin Rules/Inter-Affiliate Initial Margin
- Volcker Rule Covered Funds Clarification and Regulatory Harmonization
SEC
- Raise the limit and make permanent recent modifications to crowdfunding
- Harmonization of exempt offerings
- Amendments to the definition of “accredited investor”
- Regulation of proxy advisory firms and proxy voting reforms
- Disclosure of payments by resource extraction issuers
- Regulation S-K modernization
- Volcker Rule Covered Funds Clarification
Meanwhile, Waters joined with subcommittee chairmen Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) and Al Green (D-Texas) to send letters to the nation’s largest mortgage servicers requesting information related to their communications about relief available to borrowers with federally backed mortgages under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
In the letters, the committee members outlined the various borrower protections Congress included in the CARES Act and the important role servicers play in implementing these protections.
“Millions of homeowners will rely on the relief included in the CARES Act as they struggle to make timely mortgage payments in the coming months,” the lawmakers wrote. “As one of the largest servicers of federally-backed mortgages, it is critical that you communicate consistent and accurate information regarding the options available to borrowers who are unable to make their mortgage payments due to financial hardship that is directly or indirectly related to the pandemic. Similarly, borrowers seeking assistance must be able to contact a customer service representative without excessive wait times or other delays.”
The letters were sent to 11 institutions:
- Bank of America Corp.
- JP Morgan Chase & Co.
- Lakeview Loan Servicing, LLC
- LoanCare LLC
- Mr. Cooper Group, Inc.
- New Rez, LLC
- PennyMac Financial Services, Inc.
- Quicken Loans
- Truist Financial Corp.
- U.S. Bancorp
- Wells Fargo & Co.