Compliance & Regulation

Back in the year 2000, when Franklin Raines held the title of chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., sponsored the Housing Finance Regulatory Improvement Act. This bill not only asked for increased oversight over Fannie and Freddie but also recommended unifying the regulation of Fannie and Freddie under one roof.

Regulators’ efforts to strengthen the oversight of the shadow U.S. banking system, which plays an important role in mortgage-backed securities financing, appear to be paying off.

There has been a ton of confusion surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 37 pages of rule making on mortgage compensation. We just want to point out that the rule is far from settled.

Two recent and largely unrelated developments have renewed attention to two recurring post-downturn themes that persist even though the bubble’s bursting is receding further into the rear-view mirror, namely: The potential for heightened buyback sensitivities and for covered bonds to make more inroads domestically.

The NCUA has changed its troubled debt restructuring (TDR) rule to allow credit unions to deem a restructured member mortgage loan current as soon as the loan is closed.

The nation’s megabanks are continuing to sit on their nonperforming residential loans, although some are currently out in the market with mid-sized packages.

For years, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act had applied only to the Environmental Protection Agency and, more recently, to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.The Dodd-Frank Act extended the law to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, requiring for the first time that a financial regulator meet with small institutions before proposing any rule that would significantly impact them.

The working group investigates potential false or misleading statements, deception or other type of misconduct when mortgage-backed securities are created and sold.

A statute long relegated to the environmental regulatory landscape is transforming the way consumer financial regulations are implemented.

The Federal Reserve Board this week released the last details of how two mortgage servicers—Citigroup Inc. and HSBC Finance Corp.—plan to fix problems in their home loan servicing and foreclosure processes.