Compliance & Regulation

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has a "healthy skepticism" about whether its REO bulk sale initiative will work, according to Meg Burns who's in charge of the sale.

Foreclosure law firm Steven J. Baum P.C. and Pillar Processing LLC have agreed to a $4 million settlement with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for conducting improper legal filings against distressed homeowners.

One of the most misunderstood and misapplied areas concerning LO compensation involves the application of varying compensation related to the source of the business. In its simplest form, the concept is that a company should be able to pay a loan officer more for a self-originated deal than it pays a loan officer for developing a loan through a lead purchased by the company.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late this week unveiled an interactive database with answers to consumers' frequently asked questions about financial products.

Fannie Mae granted more than 11,000 exceptions to its lending standards for single-family mortgages it owned in early 2005, according to a new government report attempting to explain how Fannie's portfolio faltered during the housing bubble.

In competitive sports, being first is always the goal. But the distance between the U.S. - at the head of the pack - and the rest of the world in crafting financial reforms is becoming a major hurdle for implementing the Dodd-Frank Act.

Wells Fargo/Wells Fargo Funding isn't saying much about its 'exclusionary list' of mortgage firms that it will not buy loans from in the secondary market. (National Mortgage News has been reporting on the issue since Monday.) And of course, correspondent lenders want to know one thing and one thing only: Am I on the list?

The National Credit Union Administration said it will receive roughly $5.25 million from HSBC for settling claims against the banking giant related to mortgage-backed securities it sold to five now defunct corporate credit unions.

Administration officials are trying to get the Federal Housing Finance Agency to reconsider its resistance to principal reductions on loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told lawmakers Wednesday.

Days after he suggested smaller depositories should be subjected to different consumer-compliance rules than larger ones, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray said regulators simply should consider the differences between financial institutions when crafting rules for everyone.