Tag Archives: OCC

Six federal financial regulatory agencies Thursday issued minimum requirements for state registration and supervision of entities that provide appraisal management services to lenders, underwriters, and other principals in the secondary mortgage market.

Last week, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker had proposed a plan for overhauling the federal regulatory system—one that included eliminating the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) altogether. Since dubbed the “Volcker plan,” the head of the OCC, Thomas Curry, has come out against the proposal, saying it would be ineffective at solving the nation’s regulatory issues.

A core argument of the report is that the government’s attempt to handle the economic disasters of the past several decades have resulted in a bloated and redundant regulatory infrastructure that has made a mess of its own efforts to police the nation’s financial system.

The closure, announced jointly by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and FDIC, comes after years of increased scrutiny from regulators. OCC first filed a consent order against the Crestview bank in 2010, demanding operational changes after it uncovered what the agency called "unsafe and unsound banking practices."

The latest data from OCC shows that out of a portfolio totaling 23.6 million loans with a combined unpaid principal balance of about $4.0 billion (about 46 percent of residential mortgages in the U.S.), the percentage of current and performing mortgages increased both quarter-over-quarter (from 92.9 percent to 93.0 percent) and year-over-year (from 91.4 percent to 93.0 percent) in Q3.

According to the OCC survey, 92 percent of surveyed banks originated residential real estate loans in 2014, and a full 20 percent reported tightening their standards regarding who can attain these loans. Seventy percent reported no changes in their standards, leaving a comparatively slight 10 percent of institutions claiming they eased their standards for residential mortgages.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) closed down the Palm Desert-based Frontier Bank—also known as El Paseo Bank—citing a lack of assets and earnings "due to unsafe and unsound practices."

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced Monday two deputy comptroller appointments, naming Darrin Benhart as deputy comptroller for supervision risk management and Bethany Dugan as deputy comptroller for operational risk.

Only a week after the latest collapse, federal regulators announced the closure of yet another government-insured bank, bringing the year-to-date tally to 16. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced Friday the shuttering of the National Republic Bank of Chicago, appointing FDIC as receiver.

The so-called qualified residential mortgage (QRM) rule, which was put up for consideration by FDIC's board of directors Tuesday morning, would require banks to retain at least 5 percent of a loan's risk when packing mortgages to sell to investors in the secondary market. The QRM rule is one of the bigger provisions mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, with co-author Barney Frank remarking in the past that risk retention is "the single most important part of the bill."