Tag Archives: Processing

In the United Kingdom, HSBC is responding to market demand by rolling out the financial institution's lowest-ever two-year fixed rate mortgage. Announcing the new offering, HSBC revealed that borrowers can secure a 1.99 percent fixed rate with a 40 percent deposit or home equity value.

After remaining relatively flat for about a year, mortgage fraud is on the rise again, according to CoreLogic.

A month before her swearing-in, Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is already making waves in Washington. The Huffington Post reports Warren has been selected to fill a soon-to-be-open seat on the Senate Banking Committee. The position is just the latest in a string of regulatory oversight roles for Warren, who has built a political career out of being "a tough cop on the beat for Wall Street."

Asking prices on for-sale homes rose in November at a breakneck pace, but the gap between certain markets is growing more pronounced, according to Trulia's latest Price Monitor. However, even as the recovery in national prices accelerated in November, the number of metros reporting quarter-over-quarter price increases fell, dropping to 70 from 79 in August. Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko said the disparity points to an uneven recovery from metro to metro.

FDIC-insured banks continued to show improving health in the year's third quarter, the agency reported Tuesday. Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by FDIC reported aggregate net income of $37.6 billion in Q3, up $2.3 billion (or 6.6 percent) from a reported $35.2 billion in Q3 2011. Aggregate net income has increased on a year-over-year basis for 13 straight quarters. Total loan balances also increased for the fifth time in the last six quarters.

President Obama has appointed two new chairs to lead the FDIC's board of directors, the agency announced. Martin J. Gruenberg is the board's new chairman, and Thomas M. Hoenig is the vice chairman.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ServiceLink has appointed a new company leader, naming Kevin Coop as EVP of enterprise strategy. In his new role, Coop will head up business development for ServiceLink's originations and default sales teams, as well as coordinating the company's marketing group and product development strategy team.

The always-expensive Manhattan real estate market has gained a sky-high listing with an equally lofty price tag, with the former home of architect Paul Rudolph recently hitting the market for $27.5 million. According to Curbed, Rudolph is famous for creating "some of the country's best known Brutalist structures," and his legendary former residence boasts three spacious apartments which are now for sale collectively.

In a testimonybefore two House subcommittees, Fifth Third Bancorp CFO Daniel Poston (speaking on behalf of the American Bankers Association) urged the withdrawal of Basel III's "standardized approach" in light of the burdens it would bring to banks and to the overall economy. In his testimony, Poston said that most banks have no problem with capital requirements and noted capital levels are already high. The problem, he said, lies in the "arbitrary--and excessive--risk weights that will hurt banks, our customers, and the U.S. economy overall."

Mortgage fraud cases declined by 15 percent over the third quarter of this year, while the dollar amount involved in mortgage fraud cases declined by just 6 percent, according to the Third Quarter 2012 Mortgage Fraud Index released Monday by MortgageDaily.com. This disparity in declines points to an increase in the amount of money involved in each case during the quarter, according to Mortgage Daily. The total dollar amount of loans involved in mortgage fraud cases in Q3 was $1.7 billion, up from $1.3 billion in the same period last year.