Tag Archives: CFPB

Borrower claims appear to be fleeing the housing market two years after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau introduced the Ability to Repay rule for mortgage servicers.

This is a landmark case because it is the first time in the almost five-year history of the CFPB that a company has judicially challenged a penalty handed down by the Bureau.

Financial reform under Dodd-Frank has taken some heat and even encountered a few setbacks lately, namely the removal of the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) from MetLife and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s pending trial from PHH Corp.’s appeal of a $109 million penalty handed down last June.

Now almost five years old, the CFPB remains the subject of a heated debate among lawmakers: Is the Bureau an organization vital to the financial well-being of consumers, or is it simply a government bureaucracy that abuses its power?

Since the initial implementation of these rules, the CFPB has made several moves to expand the definitions of “small creditor” and “rural area,” but before the HELP Act, smaller lenders were only eligible for special provisions if more than half its loans were in rural or underserved areas.

NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger wrote Cordray a letter Thursday asking the Director to exempt credit unions from certain rulemakings.

Almost immediately, PHH and its lawyers, Los Angeles-based Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, petitioned the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to “modify or set aside civil investigative demand” while the company made its case against what it called an abuse of power by the CFPB.

The number of loan servicing, escrow, and payment-related complaints has been relatively stable with the volume of current inventory over the two-year period of 2013 and 2014. As of the end of 2014, the number of such complaints averaged less than one per every 10,000 current loans (0.77).

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.

Specifically, the complaint said that Genuine Title offered purchasing, analysis and consumer data to loan officers and created mailers on the officers’ behalf. In exchange for this, the officers then referred buyers to Genuine’s closing services. Loan officers also allegedly received cash payments through their individual companies.