Compliance & Regulation

The nation's two largest mortgage servicers—Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co.—are among the most sued financial service firms in the nation, according to a new tally from Institutional Risk Analytics.

The Federal Housing Administration has stopped allowing lenders to use appraisals of model homes in a subdivision or condominium project to value units under construction.

The nation's premier mortgage trade group believes the current servicing compensation regime doesn't work anymore and is exploring different options on behalf of the industry.

The advent of Basel III and its effects on MSRs, the difficulty of hedging mortgage servicing rights, and the strain of making advances to investors are all driving the regulatory search for a new way to compensate servicers.

The Federal Housing Administration has completed its reviews of the largest FHA servicing shops and is now processing notices of violations of its loss mitigation and foreclosure standards.

FDIC chairman Sheila Bair is calling on residential servicers to step up their efforts to modify loans and compensate homeowners harmed by the foreclosure process as part of a settlement with the federal government.

Federal banking regulators have nearly completed their reviews of the foreclosure processing problems at the nation's megabanks and will be briefing the companies' senior management on their findings soon.

NCUA told a federal court that it will add new charges against directors and officers of WesCorp FCU, even as its efforts to hold leaders of the corporate credit union accountable for the failure of the $34 billion corporate may be slipping away.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency confirmed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exploring possible changes to mortgage servicer compensation, but said implementation is unlikely before the summer of 2012.

U.S. banks exported billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities losses to their peers in Germany and elsewhere in Europe before the housing collapse. Now those overseas institutions may join the effort to put back some of the losses.