Tag Archives: Service Providers

On Monday the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released a statement announcing the nomination of E.J. Burke, a senior executive and director at KeyBank Real Estate Capital and Corporate Banking Services, as its vice-chair. Burke has more than three decades of experience in the mortgage banking business, At KeyBank, he also served as head of real estate capital markets, presiding over its commercial mortgage division as managing director.

Dollar Bank, one of the nation's largest mutual savings banks, is teaming up with Fiserv, Inc. to institute a single online platform that streamlines all of the bank's borrower loan information. Fiserv's online, real-time servicing solution consolidates borrower information for banks, credit unions, and investors. The company says by pooling all of Dollar Bank's consumer loans onto one servicing platform, the lender can realize additional cost savings and better serve its customers at the same time.

The Federal Reserve is raising the dollar amount of mortgage fees that triggers additional disclosure requirements under the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA). On Monday, the central bank's board of governors published its annual adjustment to the rule, bumping the amount of the fee-based trigger up 3 percent to $611, effective January 1, 2012. Currently that threshold is set at $592.

PSM Holdings, Inc. has agreed to merge its mortgage banking arm with Oklahoma's Brookside Mortgage, LLC, forming a new entity that the parent company will manage under a wholly owned subsidiary. The merger serves as the next step in a broader expansion strategy by PSM Holdings, which it began in 2010 by acquiring another Oklahoma-based mortgage banking company, CBB, Inc., and continued by acquiring UCMC in February this year.

Elizabeth Warren has hit another hurdle on the path to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, after a string of news reports revealed the administration is considering a former banker for the role. The buzz is that President Barack Obama and his advisers have begun to openly float Raj Date as a replacement nominee to fill the top position at the bureau. Date currently serves as a deputy under Warren and has ties to Capital One Financial and Deutsche Bank.

ISGN Solutions, Inc., a mortgage industry technology and services provider, announced the appointment of Scott Slifer as its new president of sales and marketing on Thursday. An accredited Certified Mortgage Banker with 22 years of financial services experience, Silfer will preside over ISGN's marketing, business development, and client relationship management services.

The Department of Treasury and HUD jointly released the Housing Scorecard for May on Thursday, finding that housing markets remain fragile with a seven-month stretch of declining home prices. The scorecard tracks monthly housing and economic data. The May edition called housing prices weak, noting only a minor boost for sales in April. Other industry reports echo the assessment with mortgage applications still falling, eroding home equity, and weak job growth -- all impacting the mortgage market.

Surveys released by Bankrate and Freddie Mac on Thursday confirm a continuing slide in fixed and adjustable mortgage rates, with analysts attributing the declines to news about weak job growth. Figures in Freddie Mac's report trended alongside those in Bankrate's weekly survey to reveal a decline for 30-year fixed-rate averages to 4.49 percent and 4.65 percent, respectively. Bankrate says its findings reflect a straight nine-week fall for mortgage rates, made more unstable by restive housing markets and long-term government debt.

The FDIC has filed a complaint with a California federal court against the owner of mortgage broker Amerifund Financial, Inc., seeking $1 million in damages based on civil fraud allegations. The suit alleges that the defendant, Eric Matthew Anderson, and several others submitted $2.4 million in fraudulent loans to the Downey Savings and Loan Association. The FDIC says Downey S&L later filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after incurring $1.2 million in losses directly related to the Amerifund loans.

The Federal Reserve released a report on Wednesday that suggests a "steady pace" of economic growth throughout most of the country, with intermittent spots of economic activity slowing in four of its 12 regional districts, namely Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta, and Chicago. The central bank's regularly published Beige Book indicated that construction and real estate markets continued to show widespread weakness. No district seemed to see an increase in home prices.