Compliance & Regulation

First American Mortgage Trust has agreed to a settlement today with the Federal Housing Administration’s Mortgagee Review Board for allegedly violating the agency’s program requirements.

A former branch manager at Nickleoid Employees Credit Union, LaSalle, Ind., has pleaded guilty to embezzling tens of thousands of dollars by adding numbers to her own home equity loan to obtain an additional credit of $163,585.

Provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that will be enforced by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will change many mortgage servicer practices, according to a panel of compliance attorneys speaking on the closing day of the SourceMedia Mortgage Servicing Conference in Dallas.

To maintain an important inducement for mortgage putbacks, Freddie Mac has warned its seller-servicers to stop cutting side deals with mortgage insurers.

Taylor, Bean & Whitaker's former chairman and CEO, Lee Farkas, ordered data sent to its warehouse lender, Colonial Bank, for nonexistent mortgages in an effort to cover up growing deficits, an ex-president testified in court this week.

Although lawmakers were ostensibly supposed to debate ways to overhaul the structure and authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a hearing Wednesday in a House Financial Services subcommittee was sidetracked by questions over whether the agency should exist at all.

Many of the nation's largest residential servicers — the subject of an intense federal audit that commenced last fall — have signed consent agreements to take corrective actions with regard to the processing of foreclosures and loan modifications, according to sources familiar with the matter.

National servicing standards "are clearly doable" according to New York Banking superintendent Richard Neiman, but the Empire State's top regulator says a lack of cooperation between the states and federal regulators is hobbling the effort.

A House Financial Services Subcommittee Wednesday approved eight separate bills to reform and downsize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae.

With the comment period drawing to a close on a federal rule that would all but eliminate private transfer fees, Virginia has become the 24th state to either restrict the controversial levies or ban than outright.