Jeff Horwitz

Fannie Mae intends to replace traditional force-placed insurance on its loans with policies from a provider of its choosing, a move that could upend big banks' controversial force-placed insurance practices.

In addition to the national mortgage servicing settlement, Nevada has reached a side deal with Bank of America, state Attorney General Catherine Masto announced late Thursday.

Now that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is backing away from a controversial plan to overhaul the 25 basis point minimum servicing fee paid on GSE loans, the market is trying to figure out what effect it will have on MSR values.

The lending industry's troubles with a controversial type of insurance coverage appear to be spreading to new areas. In recent weeks New York State's Department of Financial Services has issued subpoenas to more than 20 mortgage servicers, a dozen insurers and 20 affiliated insurance agencies, according to someone familiar with the investigation.

A New York probe has brought national attention to servicers' alleged self-dealing in the sale of force-placed insurance. But the investigation is just one of many looming challenges to the practice.

PHH, the nation's largest private mortgage company, has been notified by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it is the subject of an investigation into potentially improper reinsurance payments.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, told investors at the beginning of 2011 that potential repurchases of private-label mortgage securities are "not that material" for his bank - an assertion that increasingly appears to be in doubt.

Nevada didn't explicitly forbid Bank of America Corp. from initiating new foreclosures within its borders last month. But it might as well have done so.

In the wake of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, insurers and bankers feuded over directors and officers' liability policies. At issue: whether D&O policies covered claims brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation against a failed bank's officers.

In the first criminal case involving robo-signing of mortgage documents, Nevada's attorney filed charges Wednesday against two people accused of filing tens of thousands of false documents.

Lawyers have opened a new front in mortgage securities litigation by suing BNY Mellon and U.S. Bank over an alleged failure to properly handle the storage and recordkeeping of mortgage documents. But observers and participants in more established mortgage repurchase litigation question whether suing over trust and document custody errors is a promising fight.

Eight years ago a Bear Stearns research report on the mortgage insurance industry warned of a grave threat: In exchange for steering home buyers to the insurers, mortgage lenders were demanding unjustifiably lucrative reinsurance deals.

Many of the country's largest banks received $6 billion in kickbacks from mortgage insurers over the course of a decade, according to a previously undisclosed investigation by the Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

With Bank of America dangerously weighed down by costly acquisitions, its longstanding contention that it could jettison its troubled mortgage unit Countrywide must hold considerable appeal within the company's executive offices.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has petitioned to intervene in the proposed $8.5 billion Bank of America Corp. private label MBS settlement.

When Bank of America Corp. said it would unload the servicing of its most troubled Countrywide mortgages as part of a proposed settlement with bondholders, the surprise wasn't that investors doubted the bank could do the job.

When Bank of America Corp. announced its mortgage backed securities settlement last week the company warned that activist investors would likely fight it. It was right.

Bank of America Corp.'s proposed settlement of mortgage-backed securities claims against its Countrywide unit would force private-label investors in 530 Countrywide trusts to accept the bank's $8.5 billion offer, B of A officials said Wednesday.

The $200 million civil settlement with Regions Financial Corp.'s brokerage unit last week was the sort of case that the Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators believe should guide industry behavior.

Wells Fargo & Co. decided to exit reverse mortgages after federal officials insisted it foreclose on elderly customers who were behind on property tax and insurance payments, a Wells executive wrote in an email to business contacts Friday.