Compliance & Regulation

All 50 states are now on the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry, with Hawaii becoming the last state to join this week.

The Rural Housing Service is preparing to start guaranteeing single-family loans again, and sources expect the agency to make an announcement next week.

Sb1 Federal Credit Union of Philadelphia is still trying to find out how to identity thieves were able to tap into a customer's home equity line of credit, steal his private information – including passwords – and convince the credit union to wire $220,000 from the HELOC to an unrelated account in Hong Kong.

With Fannie Mae suing insurance carriers over coverage for the $140 million fraud at U.S. Mortgage/CU National Mortgage, credit unions victimized in the scandal are wondering whether any recovered funds will be used to compensate them for their losses.

WASHINGTON—When it comes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the maverick chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. believes the Obama administration must either fish or cut bait.

The list of states seeking to halt foreclosures is growing longer. On Oct. 6, Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray announced a civil lawsuit challenging foreclosures in which legal documents were apparently executed by so-called robo-signers.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has hired a private law firm as it continues to review subpoenaed loan documents from banks and Wall Street firms that sold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac private-label MBS.

In drafting risk retention rules, federal regulators should consider the impact capital and accounting requirements will have on issuers of private-label MBS, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Board.

The Cook County's Sheriff's office — the second largest sheriff's department in the U.S. — said it will not carry out any foreclosure evictions filed by Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and GMAC/Ally Financial, until these servicers can "provide complete assurance that the foreclosure was done properly and legally."

Among more immediate implications of widely publicized foreclosure procedure concerns for some existing residential mortgage-backed securities at press time last week was the indemnity question, although there are several other developments to monitor.