Compliance & Regulation

The Treasury Department has exceeded its authority by keeping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship so long and taking all their profits, two legislative experts said Thursday.

Banks have made progress cutting their exposure to risky home equity lines of credit, ahead of a key 10-year threshold when billions of dollars of them will reset to higher monthly payments. But there are some prominent exceptions, especially among regional banks.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday proposed a series of regulatory relief measures for small institutions, especially those in rural areas, to help them provide credit while they try to follow the agency's tough mortgage rules.

New Jersey’s largest home-grown savings bank continued to shed loans and deposits in the fourth quarter as it continues to wait to be acquired by a commercial bank from upstate New York.

Regulatory attention is supposed to be laser-focused on servicers right now, especially when it comes to how consistent they are in applying workouts. So regulators should be looking closely at whether loans have forbearance.

A judge rejected a bid by the U.S. to put on hold a series of suits by Fairholme Funds and other investors challenging the diversion of profits from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the Treasury.

Fannie Mae recently released its Collateral Underwriter automated risk assessment tool, which evaluates the risk associated with appraisals. It does not accept or reject appraisals, nor does it provide lenders with an estimate of a property's value.

Joining the hunt for higher-yielding niche loans, the asset management unit of NewOak Capital has quietly launched a private fund to acquire nonqualified residential mortgages.

The government has added further protections to reverse mortgage borrowers' spouses who are not named in the loan agreement, but placed conditions under which they are ineligible for older protections.

Before the Dodd Frank Act went into effect in 2010, the residential mortgage market was in an entirely different state — particularly in regards to servicing. Several large servicers dominated the market, but ultimately shed most of their servicing assets, creating a substantially large segment of midsize servicers.